Saving face Pandemic boredom and cold weather led two local crafters to create cosy, creative balaclavas By: Eva Wasney Posted: 3:00 AM CST Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021

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This article was published 16/02/2021 (1689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Balaclavas, but make it fashion.

Two crafty Winnipeggers are turning the practical, somewhat menacing winter headgear into wearable pieces of art.

Shawnee Isaak describes herself as a “pretty restless and fidgety” person. She picked up knitting two years ago as a way to keep her hands busy and learned to stitch by watching YouTube videos. The hobby started out as just that, but progressed to a small business when she started posting her knitted scarves, tuques, scrunchies and Baby Yoda dolls online.

“It was definitely not my first plan to sell things,” says Isaak, who works as a landscaper by day. “It’s a really neat feeling knowing that something I created (is interesting) to other people.”

Interest took off in a big way last month, after she shared a photo of herself sporting a brightly coloured knitted balaclava. Isaak stumbled on the pattern, a vintage ski mask with a singular eye hole, in one of her grandma’s hand-me-down knitting books from the 1960s.

“I saw it and I was like, ‘That is so cool, we do not see enough of these,’” she says. “It looks funky and kind of silly and I’m always drawn to that kind of stuff… and it definitely looked warm.”

The prototype — done up in green, yellow and orange yarn — got an exuberant response from followers and landed her an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Men’s fashion editor Jacob Gallagher was working on a trend piece about the rise of balaclavas during the pandemic and found Isaak’s work on Instagram through the hashtag #knitbalaclava.

“I thought it was fake; I thought it was a scam,” Isaak says of her reaction to the interview request. After some light internet sleuthing, she agreed to chat with the publication and has been fulfilling orders for balaclavas from customers across North America since the article was published in early February.

While Isaak isn’t entirely sure why the accessory is gaining popularity right now, she hopes more Winnipeggers jump on the trend.

“They just seem so practical for us — I just don’t understand why you don’t… see a lot of people wearing them,” she says. “It just keeps your face totally warm; it’s different than wearing a scarf because it actually covers your cheeks and everything.

“I think they’re really cool. I wear mine all the time.”

Gwen Trutnau is a visual artist, filmmaker and designer. She made her first balaclavas for a film she was working on and has been selling trippy one-off face warmers for the last five years.

“They kind of sat around and I decided to post them and the response was kind of intense and surprising,” she says. “I figured, why not? They’re kind of like collages for your face — face art, almost — and because of our climate, it became quite popular.”

While Trutnau does almost every other kind of fibre art — from embroidery to rug-making — she’s not a knitter. Instead, she buys plain three-hole balaclavas and spends hours dressing them up with appliqué flowers, psychedelic eyeballs, molotov cocktails and sequins. She moved into some different subject matter to commemorate 2020.

“I did a couple of burning garbage cans this winter,” she says with a laugh.

Trutnau sells a lot of her work to fellow artists and musicians and has noticed an uptick in requests during the pandemic.

“I think it might be more acceptable almost to wear one out; we’re used to having part of our face covered anyway, so this is a warm version of that,” she says. “I (also) think there’s more people making things and more of an emphasis on small-batch design.”

The balaclava started as a military garment and has been associated with everything from criminality to protest culture to music to high fashion. Trutnau enjoys the image so much she’s started making sweaters and blankets covered in balaclavas and often wears her own creations while out running errands.

“It makes you anonymous… like when you’re wearing a Halloween costume, and you feel almost empowered by that,” she says. “I feel like the ladies that sometimes hang out outside the old folks home (near) me think I’m really weird, but also love it… people definitely want to talk about it.”

Trutnau’s balaclavas start at $85 and can be purchased through her Instagram account, @objects_in_the_nightmall. Isaak sells her pieces for $65 at @shawnee_knits.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney