7 questions answered about StealThisSweater.com

1. Is this site advocating sweater theft?

No.
For those of you born yesterday (or anytime during or after the Reagan years), StealThisSweater refers to Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, a survival guide and manifesto for those who fantasize about (or pursue) anarchy. The whole book has been stolen and posted online here, so be sure to take a look to see if you've got what it takes. Chris Buck suggested the website name after John Kerry lost the 2004 election and my previous site, KnittersForKerry.com became yesterday's news. Thank you, Chris. Abbie Hoffman was a radical with a sense of humor and a hatred of The Man. At StealThisSweater, we are not fond of The Man either.

2. How do you knit those sweaters?

I have a knitting machine, a Passap e6000 to be precise. It's hooked up to a PC, and I design the sweater designs on a very rudimentary program called Win_Crea. Sometimes I design on the Mac and then burn a CD and then open it on the PC and go from there. Then I have to connect a cable to the knitting machine, which has a very small memory, and from there I can knit. The design is automatically integrated into the knitting. It's oldish technology, since new knitting machines aren't available anymore, but despite being a real pain in the ass, it works quite well. It takes a bit longer than I thought it would when I got it. I thought "machine= fast," but this isn't really the case.

Because it takes forever. I do hand knit socks and hats and things.

4. Why sweaters?

I've been obsessed with sweaters for quite awhile. The longevity of them is very important to me. You might throw out a t-shirt after the sentiment stales, but a sweater is more permanent. I love the tradition of knitting. The popularity of the sweater for women coincided with women's fashions becoming less restrictive and suffragettes leading the way towards women's rights. Knitting is radical!

Before there was StealThisSweater.com, there was AmericanHomebody.com, which had a good run. On the AmericanHomebody homepage, you can download pdfs of SADDLESORE, which is my mag about riding a bike in Los Angeles.

7. Who took that hot photo of Lisa knitting?

NY photographer Chris Buck flew all the way out to Los Angeles to take this sweet photo of me knitting a sweater for Rae Norton. Thanks, Chris, for making me look like one foxy knitter!

Any other questions?

Shoot me an email:

LisaATStealThisSweater.com

That AT should be a @.

But if I just typed it out proper, I'd be a spam magnet.