The Heathen Housewife

I’m a little late with the news, so many of you have probably already heard all about the Bohus exhibit that opened this weekend at the American Swedish Institute here in Minneapolis. I heard about it months ago, and signed up for some of the events on Saturday with my friend and neighbor Laura.

We were up early and out in the sub-zero weather in time for the 9:30 hosted tour of the exhibit with Susanna Hansson, who has translated some of the original patterns to English and teaches classes on Bohus Knitting; and Kerstin Olsson, one of the original designers. It was really neat to walk through the exhibit and have Olsson there to share the history of the designs and the stories and inspirations behind them.

And, um, I realized only after I’d taken a bunch of pictures that none are allowed in the mansion. That sign right next to Kerstin points it out, but I apparently wasn’t paying attention. Oops.

Aaanyway, look! Here’s one of my favorite sweaters from the exhibit, I think it was called the Peacock. It would look great with my coloring. Too bad it hasn’t been reproduced in the kits yet.

There were lots of beautiful sweaters and other garments, many of which were not shown in the Poems of Color book.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve oogled the pictures in the Poems of Color book – it’s beautiful and a great read. I’d seen the photograph behind Kerstin in this picture and recognized it immediately, but only after seeing her there with it did it hit me that I was listening to the pixie-like designer from the old photos describe what it had been like.

After the tour, we headed straight to the viewing of a documentary film by Kjell Andersson, who was there to present it and answer our questions afterwards. It was really interesting, and included mention of the Nazi resistance work done by the movement’s founder, and interviews with some of the knitters and designers.

There was some hanging out and knitting, and Laura (left in the photo below, wearing an awesome Pi shawl that she recently finished), introduced me to her friend Tasha, who I’d heard much about and was very excited to meet. She’s an awesome knitter and spinner.

We went out to lunch at Pho 79, then came back for more fun at the exhibit, including a lecture by Solveig Gustafsson, the master dyer who is creating the new kits for knitters.

Oh, and I ran into a couple of friendly-cool knitter-acquaintances who are lots of fun – Gretchen and Jennie (the Potter).

I got a good chunk of a new sock knit during all this – it’s some of my handspun, and it’s sport weight, so it’s knitting up super-fast.

Oh, and I succumbed to a little temptation in the museum gift shop…

A kit for one of the newly re-created sweaters, the Red Light, which was made available for the first time at the museum shop for this exhibit; plus one of the booklets for the exhibit, which is nice but I have to tell you that if you don’t have the Poems of Color book yet, it’s a much better investment; and a set of pretty notecards, which I think I’ll frame up and hang in my office room.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 3:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.