Using custom-built, industrial-sized knitting needles, Jacqui Fink (@jacquifink) uses her whole body to knit extreme-scale textiles and art installations at her home in Sydney. “It’s one part bonkers, two parts beautiful and three parts the best therapy there is,” she says. Jacqui, whose mother taught her to knit as a child, returned to the craft after a career in law and being bolstered by a moment of inspiration. “I had a vision, which transformed my life and opened the door to extreme knitting. While I was asleep, a big, loud booming voice said to me, ‘You have to knit, and it needs to be big.’ The command was as terrifying as it was profound,” she says. “There was no way I wasn’t going to listen to it.”
Jacqui uses high-grade merino roving, yarn and wools sourced from Australia and New Zealand. Effectively handling delicate merino wool on a large scale took her over two years of research and experimentation. She sits on an armless chair to support the needles — over three and a half feet (110 centimeters) long, made of PVC plumber’s pipe with hand-turned timber ends — and the weight of the wool, which can be 11 pounds (5 kilograms) for an average throw. “The terrific thing about extreme knitting is that you get rewarded very quickly for all your hard work. You can knit yourself a scarf in an hour, a throw in four and king-size blanket in six,” she says.
Photo by @jacquifink