National Moth Week Moth fun Knitted moths – a guest post by Max Alexander

Knitted moths – a guest post by Max Alexander

meandaxolotlsI’m Max Alexander and I love knitting moths. Until last year I spent most of my time making knitting and craft themed jewellery and occasionally knitting strange creatures. Then a friend mentioned that he thought a knitted Rosy Maple Moth would be cool. I’d never heard of it and was impressed by how strange and pretty it was. I started looking at other pictures of moths and quickly became obsessed. I’d always thought of moths as tiny beige things that would eat my wool. I had no idea how varied and beautiful they could be.

urania-sloanus-moth

Urania sloanus moth

Actias, Luna moth

Actias, Luna moth

IMG_4668Once I started knitting moths I was offered the opportunity to have an exhibition of them in a yarn shop called Prick Your Finger in London. So by November I had quite a collection of moths including a Luna moth and a couple of different tiger moths. I framed them up and labelled them with their common and scientific names. They’ve proved to be quite popular so far and I keep discovering new more wonderful moths.

Garden tiger moth

Garden tiger moth

The list of ones that I want to make is getting a little out of control. I’ve even made an extinct moth, the Urania Sloanus, that I saw on twitter. All of my moths so far are based on photographs or specimens but I’m hoping to be able to study some live ones soon.

Io moth, detail of wing

Io moth, detail of wing

Once I heard about National Moth Week I thought it would be a good excuse to knit a lot more. I will be putting a new moth online every day during NMW including the beautiful Automeris Io.

It’s great being able to use knitting to spread the word about the wonderful world of moths. I try to be as precise as I can, but I hope the experts won’t mind a few of the knitted inaccuracies…!

http://www.maxsworld.co.uk/knitted-sculpture/moths

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3 thoughts on “Knitted moths – a guest post by Max Alexander”

  1. AMAZING! I am a biologist and moth lover. I wish I could have all of these. I crochet, and am researching how I might do a few that way for myself 🙂

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