William Lee was a clergyman in England in the late 1500s. His wife was a good cook but a slow knitter and William wanted to change that. So, he came up with a grand vision to invent a machine that could knit. He managed to build a knitting frame powered by foot pedals that mimicked the movement of his wife’s hands and voila, she was able to knit socks in a fraction of the time. Offspring of William Lee’s ideas are still in use today and these descendants were whirring away as we readied ourselves to install our mural honoring this forward thinker. We were invited into this hive by Liz and Brad Hilton who own KNITit, a company that makes many 3D knitted goods. Liz is a 3D knitting specialist and her most notable creation is the Swaddelini, a soft and stretchy sleepsack for newborns. Her livelihood easily connect its origin to William Lee, so her and Brad hired Ash and me to honor William Lee with a mural.

This mural is indoors and presented a unique opportunity for us to try out a new innovation of our own: wood cutouts. We wanted to push the dimension even further and a wood cutout was an exciting new direction to explore.