Knitting News

Knit a River | Treehugger

Knit a River
Treehugger - October 13 2006

Knitting has grown from being a hobby for grandmothers to becoming a hip way to get together with other women (and men). Knitting clubs are springing up around town, meeting at pubs, and creating outrageous and wonderful pieces. I Knit London was started as a place to meet knitters. It has taken on the Knit a River project as its own. They are creating a unique petition for WaterAid. This charity uses practical solutions to provide safe water, effective sanitation and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people. In response, knitters from all over England are contributing knitted blue squares. [more]

Flying fingers set SA knitting record | The Herald

Flying fingers set SA knitting record
The Herald - August 18 2006

South Africa‘s fastest knitter is George bookkeeper Alta Tucker, who recently broke the national record by knitting 178 stitches in three minutes.

The previous record of 162 stitches was broken while competing against 70 local contestants during the Southern Cape fastest knitter competition in George last month.

“To knit that fast is really exceptional,” said The Wool Studio owner and co-sponsor Melise Richter.

“The women have all been practising very hard as the overall winner will go to England later in the year to compete against knitters from the UK and the US.” [more]

Woman Knits Sweaters For Iraq Deaths | abc7news

Woman Knits Sweaters For Iraq Deaths
abc7news - May 29 2006

A San Francisco woman is remembering fallen troops in Iraq through an art project on display in her front yard.

Nina Rosenberg has knitted more than 2,000 miniature red sweaters. They hang on a tree in front of her Bernal Heights neighborhood home. [more]

Viva las craftivistas | Guardian

Viva las craftivistas
Guardian - May 29 2006

'How's your hand grenade going?" asks an Amelie-lookalike in my local pub. Her friend holds up an olive-green blob and looks at her needles. "I think I've gone wrong somewhere."

"Amelie" is knitting a pair of complicated stripy socks in rainy-day colours, in what looks like cloud-soft wool. "It's cashmere and it's expensive," she says. Grenade-girl says that her wool comes from a charity shop and that she never really thought about knitting before she saw a copy of Rachael Matthews' "extreme knitting" book, Knitorama, which includes patterns for everything from a set of knitted flying ducks to a crocheted pint of beer. She's thinking about tackling one of the book's other projects - purling a sandwich - if the hand grenade turns out OK.

[...]The reasons for this resurgence are varied - though obviously sheer enjoyment is way up top - but many crafters, such as Stoller, also cite their personal politics as an influence. Some see crafting as a stance against mass culture and consumerism: individuality triumphing over uniformity. And then there's the green perspective: better to turn old fabric into something original instead of contributing to landfill. There's the subversive, punk-rock DIY attitude. (Young feminist author Periel Aschenbrand caused a storm in the US with her screen-printed slogan T-shirt proclaiming, "The only bush I trust is my own", which women including Gloria Steinem and Susan Sarandon sported on protest posters before the 2004 US election).

And then there's the feminist perspective, a re-think of the 1970s equation that domesticity equals oppression. Now that crafting is a choice rather than a necessity (mothers no longer having to knit just to clothe their kids) its association with drudgery has disappeared. Where many second-wave feminists saw crafts as synonymous with the kitchen sink, today's young feminists see them as a potent form of expression.

And this political outlook has led to many of these new crafters calling themselves "craftivists" or "craftistas". On her website, craftivism.com, American blogger Betsy Greer explains the notion of craftivism. "Each time you participate in crafting you are making a difference," she writes, "whether it's fighting against useless materialism or making items for charity ... it is possible to go beyond banners, email petitions and chants as ways of fighting for a cause you believe in. You could have a knit-in, papier-mache puppets or teach a crafty class for kids." [more]

Massive Knit NYC - May 23 2006

Massive Knit NYC - May 23 2006 [via Space and Culture]

"We would like to provide a collective, connected, community of individuals to honor the late Jane Jacobs who passed away on April 25, 2006. Jane Jacobs was an activist, a community leader, a writer, an urban planner, and a hero to many people. One of her great feats was as the chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway. This expressway would have run through Washington Square Park. We plan to gather in this park on the 23rd of May to memorialize her and her ideas. We want to convene as a community in a loving and subtle way, honoring the park as well as her memory. We plan to do this by knitting the park together." [more]

Cute pink tank cozy | Boing Boing

Tank cosy
Originally uploaded by mms.

Cute pink tank cozy
Boing Boing - April 19 2006

Crafted for a peace protest in Copenhagen. The fluffy pom-pom dangling from the end of the gun barrel is a thoughtful touch. [more]

Microfinance Will Help Sustain Rwandan Knitting Program | U.S. Department of State

Microfinance Will Help Sustain Rwandan Knitting Program
U.S. Department of State - March 1 2006

Microfinance is a way for individuals and small groups to get small loans -- from $50 to $1,000, normally -- from banks or other lending institutions. In the developing world, nearly 99 percent of such loans are repaid.
Cari Clement hopes such small loans will help her knitting program in Rwanda become sustainable.
Speaking of the program, she says: "Right now there are 90 machines in country, but there are over 500 women who know how to use them, so they all trade off because everybody wants to learn." (See related article.)
The knitting machines are given to organizations, not to individuals, she explains. "And when the [Rwanda Knits] two-year grant 'sunsets,'" she says, "they will become the property of the association, made up of 16 groups in Rwanda, furnishing them with collateral.
"The spin-off is that now they're going to be eligible for microfinance. So I'm working with UNIFEM [United Nations Development Fund for Women] on being able to handle distribution of yarn now that we've found a good yarn spinner in Kenya that will spin acrylic yarn for the local domestic market, which really makes the project sustainable." [more]

American Knitter Turns Dream into Reality for Women in Rwanda | U.S. Department of State

American Knitter Turns Dream into Reality for Women in Rwanda
U.S. Department of State - February 28 2006

"Making beautiful things lifts the spirit and offers hope, and in Rwanda I really saw it happen," says Cari Clement, an American woman from the state of Vermont who helps African women in Rwanda rebuild their lives by providing machines they use for knitting products for export and domestic sale.
The only fact most Americans know about Rwanda is the genocide that happened there in 1994. But Clement knows it as a beautiful country with intelligent, energetic, smiling women eager to work and support themselves and their families.
Her dream of helping these women through knitting led her to develop a program called Rwanda Knits in 2003.
"The initial donation was of 60 [knitting] machines, accessories and training," she says. "These went to the refugee camps and were donated through UNHCR [Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees]. On my second trip over, in January 2004, we brought an additional 30 machines, which were donated to AVEGA [an association of widows from the genocide] and AVVAIS [an association of widows affected by AIDS]. This comprises the 90 machines, which were donated within the first year," she told the Washington File in a telephone interview.
Clement says Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy deserves much of the credit for getting her project off the ground. When she called him for a letter of support, his aide Tim Reiser mentioned that he was going to Rwanda. She suggested that Reiser go see the Rwanda Knits programs, and "he went to the refugee camp in Gihembe -- that's in Byumba province, about an hour from Kigali. And it's just destitute ... dust everywhere, no windows -- but everybody came there ready to go to work."
Reiser was so impressed that he told the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officials with him that they should fund the program. As a result, Clement, who had been grant-writing for a year, received a $99,000 grant for Rwanda Knits. [more]

Feminism meets domesticity | Chicago Tribune

Feminism meets domesticity
Chicago Tribune - December 14 2005

"Women who embrace what I call the new domesticity are not traditional women," says Jean Railla, 35, founder of GetCrafty.com, a Web site she designed to "explore the place where feminism and domesticity could meet."
"Most of them, I think, consider themselves third wave feminists," says Railla, a New Yorker. "They're independent, earn their own living, but they also have come to appreciate doing things by hand, taking care of their home, knitting, embroidery as a way to find meaning and create a haven."
... The Grandma stigma and aesthetics create a sort of tension between traditional and new wave crafters.
"Country crafts are definitely not my aesthetic," says Cooper, who always is working on one craft project or another, including making the one-of-a-kind purses she sells online.
Mutual feelings of distaste
"Urban hip crafters would find all country crafts in bad taste," Cooper says. "The country crafters would probably look at a lot of their reconstructed T-shirts or pebbly crocheting and just consider them horrible as well."
Nina Rubin, who owns a trendy knit shop, Nina, in Wicker Park, has noticed that "mature customers want to follow a pattern to the word, want guidance, want to do the right thing. The younger knitters are much more experimental."
[more]

Third wave craftivism? | Columbia Chronicle Online

Third wave craftivism?
Columbia Chronicle Online

As more and more hip, urban, young women pick up knitting needles and take a seat in sewing circles, the crafting trend is, for some, turning into a political act. In response to this sudden surge in crafty culture, Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media brought four panelists with extensive DIY backgrounds to the Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., to discuss the possible link between feminism and crafting.
DIY, or Do It Yourself, has been around forever. From the good ol’ days when men and women made their own clothes because there was no other option to the Great Depression, when paying people to make things was simply not feasible, people have been “doing it themselves” for years.
The panel, “Crafty Culture: Feminism, Activism and the D-I-Y Ethic,” brought crafter and “DIY Trunk Show” founder Cinnamon Cooper, Time Out Chicago and former Venus DIY editor Annie Tomlin, painter and poet Alejandra Valera and former editor-in-chief of TENbyTEN magazine Annette Ferrara as moderators where they discussed the politics of craft. [more]