Loop-d-Loop
Teva Durham is the designer of loop-d-loop patterns, in her own words...
“I was taught to knit and purl (Continental style) by my grandmother, Nani, at a young age. Nani was an "Auntie Mame"-type who travelled the world and breezed through our hometown (St. Louis) in fashion-forward garb, much of which she had knit or sewn herself. Her visits made a big impression on me, but I knit nothing more than 5 inches of a scarf. My parents are fine artists (painters), and I set out at an early age to find my own artistic niche. Knitting, beading, tie-dye, weaving, pottery, macramé - all these were fun and I loved to do them from dawn to dusk (to my parents dismay I even went through a period of making hundreds of those nylon loop potholders) but to my mind these crafts weren't going to have a global impact. I fell in love with the theatre which made words and worlds come alive for me. Then, as a drama student in London in the mid-eighties (a knitting boom) I was mesmerized by the elaborate sweaters in the window of Patricia Roberts.
“Soon I was concentrating on intarsia charts more than iambic pentameter. I started loop-d-loop with the hope of raising the respect for the skill of knitting, which is devalued by the low cost of hand-labour overseas. I would like the non-knitting consumer to believe as I do that the positive (or negative) energy of the knitter is transmitted into the garment and that it is worth an un-Gap price for something lovingly made.”
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