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Alpine Antics

by Maddy Cranley

The hills are alive and so it appears is the appeal of the 1965 Oscar-winning movie and third-highest grossing film of all time, The Sound of Music. Since its premiere in August 1999, a reincarnation of the movie as a sing-a-long version has become an institution in London, England and has been drawing them in twice a week at the Prince Charles Cinema. The Sing-a-Long Sound of Music has since crossed the Atlantic, enjoyed a song-filled run in New York and is soon to appear in many other North American cities. Complete with subtitled song lyrics, enthusiastic audience participation, which extends to many dressing as their favorite character while waving sprigs of edelweiss at appropriate moments in the plot, the theater marquee should probably flash "The Rocky Horror Picture Show Meets Sing Along With Mitch."

The audience, made up of all ages and persuasions, are encouraged to participate in this event and not just with their voices. Dressing up is definitely welcome. Among the expected lederhosen and nuns' wimples, are found others dressed as brown paper packages or those with tiny plastic snowflakes glued to their nose and eyelashes - all paying homage to just a few of Maria's favorite things.

Ad libs from the audience, perhaps fuelled by licensing laws that allow alcoholic beverages in English theaters, add another dimension to the scene as participants have been heard to yell "Ree-co-laaaa!" every time a vista of the towering Alps appear on screen or calling for a "Wet Dirndl Contest!" when the von Trapp children tumble from their rowboat into the lake. The company producing this spectacle has a web site at www.singalonga.co.uk which along with information and tour dates, features a page of photographs of participants in costume, just in case you would prefer not to appear as one movie-goer did - a giant tea bag carrying a loaf of bread and a jar of jam.

Tyrol, a mountainous region in the Austrian and Italian Alps, conjures up images of plush loden cloth, prettily embroidered dirndls and swinging full skirts. Loden cloth that wonderful fulled wool fabric, likely born out of the necessity of needing a warm material in the harshness of a mountain climate, has a long tradition in Austria. The Telfs Loden Company boasts that it has been manufacturing loden cloth in Innsbruck since 1774. The traditional color of loden cloth is a dark greyish-green which in turn makes for a wonderful neutral against which to place clear strong colors much like Alpine wildflowers appear on a green mountainside.

Tyrolean knitting shares a somewhat common look to other knitting styles of Northern climes, perhaps bound together by the common experience of snow and cold, but to the keen eye, there are many distinctions among the knitting traditions found in the Northern hemisphere. These differences are clearly demonstrated in methods such as Swedish twined knitting or the Norwegian technique that uses "steeks" as a method of cutting the knitting to insert a zipper or opening for the latch or button closure. In our global world, it unfortunately seems that any bulky sweater knit with patterns of reindeer, snowflakes or other cold-weather motifs, is often just lumped under the term "ski sweater".

A Tyrolean design often features an overall small motif such as the four-stitch cross worked in two colors to form a "fleur de lis" background. A more complex motif, perhaps with additional colors form bands of patterning that finish the lower edges of the garment, sleeves, and collar. The design motifs are often taken from nature, favoring flower and leaf silhouettes. The collar is usually a stand-up one, close-fitting to the neck to shield against the cold. The design motifs are often taken from nature, favoring flower and leaf silhouettes. Aran knitting doesn't corner the market when it comes to cables as Barbara Walker demonstrates Tyrolean cables in her Treasury of Knitting Patterns (No.1). For a finishing touch, a Tyrolean sweater never seems complete without beautiful buttons fashioned from pewter or horn.

Surely you won't feel out of place at the Sing-a-Long Sound of Music if your sweater is not of perfectly correct style but once you sit down, view those incredible vistas and belt out a few verses of Climb Every Mountain, the Tyrolean Alps will feel like home.

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© 2002 Maddy Cranley. All Rights Reserved. Maddy Cranley is a professional knitwear designer, who has created exclusive designs for knitting and craft magazines, authored three popular books on the subject of creating felt garments and projects from handknitting and publishes a line of maddy laine handknitting patterns. For further information, contact www.maddycraft.com.


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