Rania Hassan is a well known Washington DC artist who has mastered three art forms at once. She is a graphic designer and illustrator, a painter, and a knitter, and she has found a way to integrate all three of her skills into her artwork, under the label goshdarnknit.

Her whimsical illustrations of big-eyed, somber girls and tangled, beautiful botanicals are individually hand printed on Moleskin notebooks in various sizes. She also prints her images on neoprene lunch bags, also individually and by hand.

Her other skills come into play with what she calls her “knit paintings.” Unique collaborations between flat and three-dimensional mediums, her paintings depict two pairs of hands in the act of knitting. The two sets of hands share the knitted fabric, working on the same piece from both ends.

Like many new knitters, when Rania first learned to knit she became obsessed. Obsessed with yarn, with the process, with the seemingly endless patterns and designs to be made from just one stitch and just one length of yarn.

Unlike most new knitters, she translated that obsession into artwork that transcends the fiber and the process. She was intrigued by the community of knitters, and how the act of knitting connected individuals across physical and generational boundaries. Her knit paintings evoke those connections in a pretty, visual, and tactile way.

Originally from New York City, Rania has studied and traveled all over the world, and is now settled in Washington, DC. She has served as an art director for extremely esteemed institutions, including the Shakespeare Theatre, the United Nations, and the White House.

She’s also been awarded the prestigious Craft Award of Distinction for Fiber from the James Renwick Alliance, and an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Not only has she mastered her mediums, people have noticed!

You can find Rania’s illustrated Moleskine notebooks and her paintings in her online shop, and at many DC-area fine art and craft shows. Visit her web site for news regarding exhibitions and installations of her paintings.