Here's an over-sized hunk of eye candy: Dutch designer Bauke Knottnerus recently created a series of low-slung sofas made entirely from giant pieces of knitted "thread." Imagine getting hit by a shrink ray and then falling into your granny's yarn basket—that's what it might be like furnish your pad this way. While the so-called "Phat Knits" seem like a one-off oddity (headed for the same fate as the conversation pit), they do tap some recent trends in design. Chief among them is so-called radical craft: Designers resuscitating musty disciplines such as knitting by adding a whiff of the Michel Gondry surreal. One example: David Cole knitted a 35-foot American Flag, using two flagpoles as knitting needles and manipulating them with backhoes. In fact the discipline of "subversive knitting" was the subject of a well-loved show at New York's Museum of Art & Design now on view at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

[Via Today & Tomorrow]