Elizabeth Zimmermann

Elizabeth Zimmermann
Elizabeth Zimmermann (photo by Walter Sheffer)
Born	Elizabeth Lloyd-Jones (1910-08-09)August 9, 1910 England
Died	November 30, 1999(1999-11-30) (aged 89) Marshfield, Wisconsin
Known for	Knitting, designing, writing, teaching

Elizabeth Zimmermann (August 9, 1910 – November 30, 1999) was a British-born hand knitting teacher and designer. She revolutionized the modern practice of knitting through her books and instructional series on American public television.

Though knitting back and forth on rigid straight needles was the norm, she advocated knitting in the round using flexible circular needles to produce seamless garments and to make it easier to knit intricate patterns. She also advocated the Continental knitting method, claiming that it is the most efficient and quickest way to knit. During World War II, German or continental knitting fell out of favor in the UK and US due to its association with Germany. Many English-language books on knitting are in the English or American style. Elizabeth Zimmermann helped to re-introduce continental style knitting to the United States.

Born Elizabeth Lloyd-Jones in the county of Devon, England, Zimmermann was the daughter of a British naval officer; her mother invented Meals by Motor, the British forerunner of Meals on Wheels. Zimmermann attended boarding school in England and art schools in Switzerland and Germany. Her autobiographical "Digressions" in the book Knitting Around reprinted many of her original artworks alongside the text. Zimmermann learned to knit first from her mother and aunts (English Style) and then later from her Swiss governess (German or Continental Style).

Zimmermann immigrated to the United States from England in 1937 with her new husband, German brewery master Arnold Zimmermann. The Zimmermanns initially settled in New York and eventually moved across country, finally settling in Wisconsin in a converted schoolhouse which would become home to Schoolhouse Press, a mail-order knitting business still based in the schoolhouse and run by her daughter Meg Swansen.

Zimmermann is credited with knitting the first example of an Aran sweater seen in an American magazine (Vogue Knitting). (While it may have been the first item knitted, another pattern had been published 2 years previously.) The pattern for which Zimmermann knitted the model was published in Vogue Pattern Book in 1958, while a collection of patterns for men's and women's Aran sweaters with matching socks and mittens, entitled "Hand Knits from the Aran Islands," was published in a 1956 issue of Woman's Day.