There are always hints that can be picked up by an astute observer when someone becomes truly excellent at what they do. It can seem granular, the distinction between very good and world class if you don’t know much about a thing. But one of those signs is when, let's say, an artist has to create their own tools. That is, they have gotten so good that the off-the-shelf stuff just doesn’t cut it. There are other clues with micro knitter Althea Crome, such as the many one-inch-to-two-inch-tall pieces of overwhelmingly intricate knitwear that she creates. It’s like nothing you have ever seen; that is a pretty good hint right there.
In order to knit so small, she makes her own knitting needles out of surgical steel; cutting, grinding, and polishing them down to a quarter of a millimeter in diameter. My guess is that’s the easy bit. The hard part, no doubt, is the months of intricate knitting and purling she uses to create startlingly accurate reproductions of famous paintings, or tiny gloves that fit comfortably on a fingertip.
We talk to Crome about the painstaking works of art she creates, her project knitting clothes for the stop-motion film Coraline, and a little bit about the 14th century Italian Mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
