Close knit community

The Stonnington council is running the second year of the Glow Festival. A festival designed to get the Stonnington community out and about in a dull Melbourne winter.

As you may or may not know, I host a knitting group at Malvern Library. Everyone one is welcome, but I mostly teach beginners how to knit.  It is through this connection with the Stonnington Library that I became involved in the Yarn based installation for the Festival.

The festival theme is 'down the rabbit hole'.. so a link with Alice In Wonderland was the perfect connection to the Stonnington Libraries. It was proposed that we create a community based Yarn project to connect with Glow.

We put together kits and tips for library users and the broader community to make Pom-Poms, finger knitting and knitted pieces along side kits including yarn and old CDs for weaving.

Meanwhile I set about knitting a variety of large form pieces as well as pieces to patch together for the yarn bombing.

I created hoops which were both woven and knitted which we threaded with fairy lights to spell out G L O W, these are displayed in the Library window.

I also knitted hoops featuring Alice in Wonderland images such as the Pocket Watch and Heart decorated with playing cards.

And of course what would an Alice In Wonderland yarn bombing be without an oversized knitted Cheshire Cat grinning madly from the tree?!

More community involvement came with the Installation, where the Toorak Library hosted a Mad Tea Party preceding the decoration of the area. 

The Tea Party was fab! We had prizes for everyone - thanks to donations  including Pancake Parlour vouchers and hamper. There was a themed photo booth, a story telling card wall, bunting made from playing cards as well as a delicious selection of tea from Yarra Valley Tea Company and gorgeous cakes and cookies from Verve Spice cafe in Toorak Rd.

With great enthusiasm, local families and others adults all set to work to hang pom poms, decorate trees, benches and bike racks! The woven CD's were strung like textiles Christmas lights. All in all, a great job.

Thank fully we finished in time as the rain came down around 5pm.

The next day, in true Melbourne style, it was blue skies and sunshine! I stopped by to check out how the installation had fared in the rain and came across local residents curious and entertained by the sudden decoration of the space. I had a chat with a number of people who all thought it was really fun and great idea.

Be sure to check it out if you're in the neighbourhood. The installation should be up until the end of August.

I look forward to working on more community based projects in the future, bringing together people with craft and creativity is a rewarding exercise.

Knitters are social and creative Rebels!

If you think knitting is some boring pointless hobby, think again.

Hand knits fall under the category of Arts and Crafts an idealism established in order to promote artisan work in the climate of industrial mass produced products.

Power to the people!

Oldham Cotton Mill

My Grandmother was born in Oldham, a mill town in North West England. Whilst industrialization certainly created employment for the masses, little if any personal input was required. My Grandma was an excellent knitter, she had a very keen eye and was very talented at most hand crafts.

Aims, Aesthetics and Ideals http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/arts-and-crafts.htm

The Arts and Crafts movement was a social/artistic movement of modern art, which began in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth, spreading to continental Europe and the USA. Its adherents - artists, architects, designers, writers, craftsmen and philanthropists - were united by a common set of aesthetics, that sought to reassert the importance of design and craftsmanship in all the arts in the face of increasing industrialization, which they felt was sacrificing quality in the pursuit of quantity. Its supporters and practitioners were united not so much by a style than by a common goal - a desire to break down the hierarchy of the arts (which elevated fine art like painting and sculpture, but looked down on applied art), to revive and restore dignity to traditional handicrafts and to make art that could be affordable for all.

As outlined in this essay by Canadian author...

“In Canada today, knitting continues to be used as a craftivist medium, and is being employed by such groups as the ‘Revolutionary Knitting Circle’ and ‘Blankets for Canada Society Inc.’, as well as by Canadian artists like Janet Morton and Barb Hunt. The craftivist movement, an offshoot of the Arts and Crafts movement, coincides with established Western feminist thought, thus empowering the craft realm and forcing knitting to be understood by the greater public as more than a mere “craft hobby”, but as a medium to both promote social change and improve Western society at large.”

— http://cujah.org/past-volumes/volume-v/essay3-volume5/

Rebel Rebel...

Sounds pretty exciting to me! Since the beginning of this century, I feel there has been a growing interest in finding alternatives to mass produced products. There has been an awakening to the true cost we pay for cheap goods, in that the products are often constructed by workers who receive little compensation and poor working conditions.

I believe knitting and craft revolution will continue to thrive.

Viva La Knitter!

Community, caring and craft

It was raining yesterday morning as I took a brisk exercise walk in my neighbourhood to Chapel Street.

I noticed a lady walking in front of me with a shopping trolley and a bedraggled dog, she wasn't wearing any shoes.

I'm kind of weird about bare feet - I am rarely without shoes. So rather unhelpfully I asked her where her shoes were. She replied she had stayed at a friends and left them outside (cause they stank) and forgot to put them on when she left. Anyway this conversation went on for a bit as we strolled down the street together.

At one stage she was looking for something in her bags and I noticed she had balls of brightly coloured new yarn. When I asked her about the wool she said that she knitted. Well we then had a great old chat. Her name is Tracey.

Tracey said she tried to make things to sell and was hoping that Stonnington Council would allow busker style permits like the City of Melbourne. (This seems unlikely I imagine) Anyway Tracey explained to me some of the things she made.

She crocheted hats.... and was excited to tell me about the hand-warmers she made. Tracey was concerned about how to get them to fit various sized hands.. so I gave her a tip about sewing up the sides with thumb gap one inch from the bottom. She had been making the thumb gap in the middle.

Tracey then went into great detail about the sculptural pieces she was making. Wrapping sticks, that had fallen from trees, and encasing them in yarn. She then decorated them with feathers or hanging pieces of yarn. Tracey was trying to get some old unwanted jewelry pieces to add for decoration. She was really passionate about these. It was a good chat.

The fact that Tracey was living on the streets was kind of irrelevant to our conversation, but obviously not irrelevant to her welfare. I didn't want to ask too many questions, but I did want to help. I only had $4 cash on me, but I suggested she head down to the Prahran Mission to get some new shoes so she didn't injure her feet.

Anyway I hope Tracey is ok, maybe I'll bump into her again soon and we can have a longer chat about knitting, craft and life. After all, that's what being part of a community is about.