Skip to main content

Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common.

How about trying to knit with these SPNs??
Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch
  • The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space. 


  • Or how about the longest piece of finger knitting that measured 4,321.4 m (14,177 ft 9 in or well over 2.5 miles) completed by Niklas Bernhard (Germany) on June 10, 2004. (Don't know what finger knitting is, click on the hyperlink.  You need to watch just the first minute to understand how it is done.)  The finger knitted chain took more than eight years to complete and was wound into a ball weighing 5.62 kg (12 lb 6 oz).   That had to be almost his entire life! 
    Niklas' world record project
  •  The most people knitting simultaneously in a single location is 1,805 in an event in Kaohsiung City, Chinese Taipei, on December 3, 2011.  The event took place at the Tsaogong River Festival, where scarves were knit for low income families, disadvantaged minorities and the elderly in the community.  (I wonder if we (note it isn't "I") could pull off a bigger event in the Lower Mainland?)

You could find these neon green scarves in the dark.

  • Finally from February 2005, Edward Peter Hannaford (UK) holds the world record for the longest French knitting at 21.75 km (13.51 miles).  Really, that is a big ball of French knitting.  He began working on this project in 1989.  That's 16 years of work in one mighty long strand.  I'm sure he didn't work on this project in public; toting it around would have been painful.

Edward Peter Hannaford all wound up.

          Generally French knitting is done by kids using one of these spool-like contraptions:



There you go, a brief Guinness World Records snapshot in knitting.  And you thought I was weird about knitting; I don't hold a candle to this work.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
2 comments
Read more

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more