The House — Elizabeth Zimmerman

I have been working on the development of a range of wool for La Maison Tricotée for several months. We wanted to launch an innovative concept: to sell wool of very good quality, by weight, at a very reasonable price. This concept allows among other things that each and everyone can buy exactly the quantity required, and have less small remnants of wool that you never know what to do with and that you put back in a cupboard “while waiting” to know what to do with it. LA CASA , 100% Peruvian wool was born from this reflection.

It was then a question of determining a coherent color range, which was not an easy task, because all the colors had to be able to be coordinated together. I finally chose 37 colors, a range with cold tones, one with warm tones and one with saturated and vibrant tones.

These 37 colors had to have names. Everything is there, names of precious stones, names of flowers, names of stars... but after teamwork and several brainstorming sessions with the members of "La Maison Tricotée", as well as with our fervent customers, an idea has sprouted, paying homage to women who have marked history, whether they are feminists, writers, muses, adventurers, artists, or scientists. By doing our research we discovered many women whom we only knew by name, without really knowing what they had done or experienced. We would therefore like to share with you these discoveries of colorful characters who deserve to be known.

Beyond words, we want to put a face to these little-known names. They will therefore be presented to you through Sandra's texts and VALENTINE 's drawings, which we hope will honor them.

Today we are going to give you a portrait of the first one, and of course we had to start with a knitter, nay “La Tricoteuse”, the one who names our ecru color: Elizabeth Zimmermann.

Elizabeth Zimmermann (1910 – 1999), known as “The knitting guru”, was an English teacher and designer of knitting. She revolutionized the modern practice of knitting through her books as well as instructive series broadcast on American television channels. Mrs. Zimmerman's influence in the world of knitting is undeniable, among other things, she popularized circular knitting in order to create items with as few seams as possible. Her goal: to knit in the simplest and most efficient way possible.

A true architect of stitches, she has also implemented calculation methods such as the “Elisabeth percentage system” which, after having determined the number of stitches needed for the circumference of the body for a sweater (this figure will be the 100%) to deduce ratios for all other measures…

Hum I do not know if I am very clear, but it is a simple effective and recognized method. Here is a short summary with this diagram

A lover of the top-down sweater and avoiding seams at all costs, she chooses to publish her patterns themselves after they have been re-written in the traditional way without her consent. This "opinionated knitter", title of the post-hume collection of her chronicles, had a resolutely modern vision of knitting that still inspires us several decades later!

So much for the portrait of this knitting avant-garde.

See you soon for the discovery of our next portrait: Jane Goodall.

Waiting for good knitting,

Sandra and Valentine

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