Knit your own Holly Golightly!

By now it's a pretty well-established fact that I love knitting and keep trying to force it on everyone else. Consider it one of my charms. :) While going through my morning Audrey news search, I found a new knitting book called Knitted Icons: 25 Celebrity Doll Patterns, a crazy cool book that has patterns to make 25 of the most recognizable celebrities, all in vaguely voodoo doll-type form! You can see Audrey Hepburn as the instantly recognizable Holly Golightly to the left for proof that this is, in fact, a really cool book.

What's more is that this book is currently featured online at Urban Outfitters (where they are also selling Treasures and the new Audrey Hepburn: A Life In Pictures), so they're giving away a free pattern from the book as a bonus. The free pattern in question? Why, the Holly Golightly one, of course!* So if she's the only doll you were interested in making, you lucked out. Now I just have to figure out how to knit with double-pointed needles. Those things are the bane of my existence.

*Link goes directly to the pattern, in PDF.

Ode to Audrey Hepburn

When I find it, I like to profile Audrey Hepburn fan artwork because it's nice to see people still so influenced by her and willing to make her a part of their art world. I also like to find the not so mainstream art, which means things you usually don't see mass produced and/or for sale everywhere. I came across a place called Etsy again (I say again because it's been sitting in my bookmarks forever, and I'd forgotten it was there), and on a whim did a search for Audrey's name. There was one artist's work which stood out to me, mainly this painting of Holly Golightly knitting from Breakfast at Tiffany's (left). It's a limited edition print in a run of 50 on canvas that you can have just on canvas, or stretched on a wooden frame, if you're more into 3-D wall hangings. I just really like the drawing style in general, so I wanted to share!

The artist, elloh, has another Audrey piece up on the website, this one called Ode to Audrey Hepburn (right). This one is a mixed media and is one-of-a-kind and much more handmade than the prints.

Note: I do not know this artist and this is definitely not my art, so please don't think I'm giving a friend free publicity. I just really like this!

And speaking of Holly Golightly knitting, I have a Stitch 'n B---h page-a-day calendar (name edited for those of you at work or under other filters), and this was last Thursday's page:


Pretty cool, huh? The quote isn't exactly correct, but it doesn't even really matter. I was just happy to have some Audrey and some knitting that day.

knitting with Audrey Hepburn

Some of you may have known that Audrey was a real-life knitter, and she was a good enough knitter to have made herself and husband Mel Ferrer matching sweaters one Christmas. Today's news brings an article discussing good movies to knit to, and one of Audrey's films just happened to be mentioned! I don't even think the author knew about Audrey's crafty hobby, either. I wanted to mention it because it was cute, and also because I love knitting to movies as well (it helps me justify the fact that I'm sitting there, staring at a screen for two hours if my hands are at least busy).

As an added bonus, I want to help any non-knitters who might be interested started on knitting. It's actually not that hard once you figure out the three basics: casting on, the knit stitch, and the purl stitch. Really, that's about it, until you start getting into really complicated things like knitting lace and cabling sweaters. To get you started, here's a link to knittinghelp.com, which has really useful guidelines and videos to help you out, and even includes some easy, free patterns once you get the urge to start showing off your new skills. And if you needed any incentive to learn to knit, there's a book out called Hip Graphic Knits that's all about knitting images into projects, and it features a cute cowl-necked sweater with Audrey (as Holly Golightly) on it! On the cover of the book, no less. For that extra Audrey touch, you can knit something and send it to someone in need, from an ill child to suffering children in Afghanistan. If you'd like to learn more about charity knitting, you can go to knittingforcharity.org.