Elizabeth Zimmermann

A retrospective exhibit, "New School Knitting: The Influence of Elizabeth Zimmermann and Schoolhouse Press," was presented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Gallery of Design in 2006.

Elizabeth Zimmermann died in Marshfield, Wisconsin, on 30 November 1999 at the age of 89. In her obituary in The New York Times Douglas Martin wrote, "Mrs. Zimmermann chose to play down her influence on knitting, coining the term unventions for her woolly inventions."

In 1974, Zimmermann founded a series of knitting camps that continue to this day under her daughter's direction. Her motto was: "Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises."

Zimmermann is credited with knitting the first example of an Aran sweater seen in an American magazine (Vogue Knitting). (While it may have been the first item knitted, another pattern had been published 2 years previously.) The pattern for which Zimmermann knitted the model was published in Vogue Pattern Book in 1958, while a collection of patterns for men's and women's Aran sweaters with matching socks and mittens, entitled "Hand Knits from the Aran Islands," was published in a 1956 issue of Woman's Day.

Zimmermann immigrated to the United States from England in 1937 with her new husband, German brewery master Arnold Zimmermann. The Zimmermanns initially settled in New York and eventually moved across country, finally settling in Wisconsin in a converted schoolhouse which would become home to Schoolhouse Press, a mail-order knitting business still based in the schoolhouse and run by her daughter Meg Swansen.

Elizabeth Zimmermann (9 August 1910 – 30 November 1999) was a British-born hand knitting teacher and designer. She revolutionized the modern practice of knitting through her books and instructional series on American public television.