Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.12.2013, Qupperneq 22

22The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 18 — 2013
“Everything about Swants makes
you want to dance,” Stephen says.
“They’re stretchy, they heat your legs,
they’re comfortable, so they make
your legs want to do articulated move-
ments, like kicks and splits, definitely.”
Step one: Take off your pants
Stephen was likely not the first per-
son to stick his legs through sweater
sleeves and wear them around like
Indian Harbinger pants, but he was
the first to sit for 12 hours cutting,
stitching and developing a formula
for tailored sweater pants. He posted
the simple step-by-step instructions
on his website westknits.com, and
started making more of them himself,
donning swants at coffee shops and
even at night clubs in Amsterdam, his
base city.
The formula allows for the average
knitter, sewer or craft maven to make
a pair of swants in about an hour. Ste-
phen can crank out a pair in about 20–
30 minutes now, and he estimates he
has made 20 or more pairs for himself.
Through West Knits, Stephen sells
knitting patterns and designs, and
travels extensively teaching knitting
workshops. His work has repeatedly
brought him to Iceland, a Mecca of
knitting culture and his favourite place
in the world to visit.
Swants dance if you want to
His most recent jaunt to Reykjavík was
over last month’s Iceland Airwaves
festival with two of his best friends, Kyli
Kleven and Steve May. Together, the
three of them are the Fun Squad and
they make videos of themselves knit-
ting, dancing and exploring while knit-
ting and dancing. In Reykjavík, they
made a swants dance video, a “Places
Where You Can Knit: Reykjavik!” video
and went around cat bombing a num-
ber of Reykjavik’s strays (Relax! Cat
bombing is taking little knit bits and
putting them on cats). While swants
dancing, they were spotted by a CNN
photographer who posted a picture of
them on CNN’s website along with an
article on “How to be a Reykjaviker.”
Over the last month, swants have been
featured on a morning news shows in
the U.S., on cosmopolitan.com and on
the Fusion network. People from all
over the world are sending Stephen
photos of themselves in their swants,
their swoveralls (sweater overalls) and
their swonsies (a sweater onsie).
Cut of a different cloth
Dancing and knitting are stitched into
Stephen’s everyday life. He went to
university in both the United States
and the Netherlands for choreogra-
phy, but strayed from both to pursue
his insatiable knitting habit. Swantsing
and swants dancing have become the
marriage of his two foremost passions.
Swants have spread particularly
fast in the U.S., where Stephen says
knitting trends are met with un-
matched enthusiasm. It’s also where
he’s received a trickle of laughable
criticism for what a few see as de-
stroying the sanctity of a beautifully
made sweater. “Swants are about be-
ing sassy and confident and having
fun,” he says, “and if those are things
you can’t appreciate, then I just can’t
have anything to do with you.”
Stephen prefers to make swants
from sweaters that have wild patterns
and bright colours, which, when worn
in public, tend to attract wide eyes
either in admiration or confusion. For
those who don’t understand the de-
sire to make such a bold statement
with their pants, Steven offers that it’s
about colouring the world how you’d
like to see it. “You know, some people
wake up and make the decision to
wear khakis every day,” he says.
Stephen has no interest in making
swants and selling them on a large
scale. He claims he has neither the
patience nor the mechanical focus it
would take to make them en masse.
Some of his friends in the U.S. are
hoping to make and sell them at shops
and online, but his mind is already
running with new patterns to create,
ideas to try out and places to cat bomb
and swants dance. “I want to see a
swakini [sweater bikini]; I want to see
a sweedo [sweater Speedo],” he says
enthusiastically. “There’s really no end
to what can be made.”It takes a keen eye and a bold character to see a sweater as “sassy.” It takes scissors,
a tapestry needle, some safety pins, waste yarn and eight simple steps to see a sassy
sweater as sassy sweater pants. “Swants,” as they’ve been affectionately dubbed by
their creator, 25-year-old knitting guru Stephen West, are both an essential article of
clothing and a verb. Swants are a sweater, flipped upside down with your legs in the
sleeves and a bit of cutting and stitching to tailor them into fitted pants. The act of
making swants is “swantsing” and when you’ve got them on your gams it’s time to do
Stephen’s “swants dance.”
Words
Alex Baumhardt
“You know, some people
wake up and make the
decision to wear khakis
every day.”
Design
Lose Yourself To Swants
A small stretch for sweaters means a
giant leap for pantskind
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