Knit The city is excited to announce our first ever Graffiti Knitting Bootcamp.
So, do you think you have what it takes to be the next big thing to come out of the yarnstorm world?
Come and join myself and Deadly Knitshade somewhere in the UK in March and we’ll tell you all our secrets, turn you into a secret yarnstormer and set you loose on the city!
(And, if you’re lucky, we may let you leave without erasing your memory at the end of it – how nice of us is that?!)
Watch this space for more news and details on how to get involved.
So, we gathered them up and kept them warm for a few weeks while we pondered over where to finally set them free into the wild.
Then, I heard about Britain in a day, a project which encouraged everyone to pick up a camera and film their day on Saturday 12th November 2011. It was then asked that everyone send in the footage to be edited and directed by Ridley Scott to be made into a feature length film.
Being a fan of Life in a day, I really wanted to take part in this amazing project. And, so, our yarnstorm day was set. But, the place was a little less obvious. We haven’t left anything in a suburb of London collectively and certainly not in South East London. Deadly has her studio there, so it seemed right that we should leave a little wooly gift to the people of Deptford.
The fabulous Altartist filmed our progress so we didn’t have to think about camera technicalities (thank goodness) and we headed off into deepest darkest Deptford town. The market there is amazing – you can literally get thousands of different things, it was like a jumble sale on a grand scale, I totally recommend it!
Near to the market there is a huge wall, recently covered in murals for the Deptford X. The colours were perfect for the paint colour tubes I’d made, so our place was found…
It was a very interesting experience – half way through a passer by tried to unravel one of Deadly’s pieces to get the wire inside and the whole time there was a guy in the background who sounded exactly like Rimmer from Red Dwarf!
Deadly Knitshade’s ode to traditional graffiti
…Anyway, I hope that Deptford like our wooly art and that they lasted more than 5 minutes before being unravelled to use the materials!
Its been a very exciting year for us Knit The City girls. Not least of this excitement is our fantastic new book that Deadly Knitshade herself has written. Ever wondered why we do what we do, where we’ve done what we’ve done or what it is we’ve made? It’s all been packed into a beautiful coffee table hard back book. Bursting with stunning photos of our wooly crimes and with all the inside info on all of the yarn corps. To see what all the fuss is about for yourself, head on over to amazon, where you can get your mitts on your very own copy.
So, to celebrate our very own book’s arrival, we had a party, complete with a new yarnstorm in the heart of soho at Gosh Comics.
I tried to go alone, but alas those pesky crocheted characters simply follow me where ever I go. This time it was the turn of my three favourite superheroes; Batman, Spiderman and Superman. Not content to stay at home and wander around the house searching for villains to teach a lesson to, they crept into my bag and jumped on the train with me to Gosh. It could only end in disaster… or could it?
Spiderman: “Hang on a minute… where are we? I don’t remember this part of town.”
“Holy haberdashery batman, where are we?”
“I know the Joker is here somewhere…”
“Well he’s evaded us this time, but we seemed to have stumbled upon mountains of awesome books instead”
Spiderman: ” and if I could just get to the top of this mountain I may get a better vantage point”
Meanwhile the Knit The City team went in search of cake and found these awesome examples complete with phone box cosies and plarchie the squid!
..Back in the super hero world…
Superman had found a perfect view point from above the till.
Spiderman had scaled a shelf in search of evil villains
“I know I’ll find them from this height”
…and Batman had settled on top of a picture, desparate to see himself in print on the next shelf.
Will our heroes find any villains? Will they find their way back to The Fastener’s house? And will Spiderman ever manage to get on top of that huge pile of books? ‘ Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel’
If you can’t wait until next time, check out this awesome video that our fab friends at Alt Artist made of the evening:
About this time last year, I signed up to participate in a really exciting project based in the USA. It involved being sent a moleskin sketchbook and using any medium and any technique to fill it. The deadline was January 2011 after which it would fly around 10 different states, stopping at each to let anyone who wanted to to take it out of its shelf and browse its pages. It’s such a fantastic idea and I was very excited to be involved. You can read all about it on my earlier post here. The end of the tour culminated in all the books being catalogued and held in perminant residence at the Brooklyn Art Library in New York. And now, the books are in digitised format. Its so amazing that with the help of the internet you can now view a selection of the books from the comfort of your comfy sofa, no matter where in the world you are.
Stitch London and Knit The City were asked to hold a graffiti knitting workshop and so, Knit The City were given free rein to graffiti up the Tate. Such an offer could not be refused! Deadly Knitshade and I embraced the task ahead of us and decided to storm around the main columns in the main hall near to the Octagon. With Rag&Bow; The roaming vintage store interactive fashion experience just behind us and the collection display galleries to the left of us being transformed into a visual display of beautiful light bouncing off the paintings that live there, we set about to brighten up the posts with our sticks and string (and in my case hook!)…
All items handmade by The Fastener – Stick man handmade by Deadly Knitshade.
Its been 2 months since the birth of my daughter, baby button and its been far too long between yarnstorms. With International Yarnbombing Day and Stitch London’s Stitch Crawl approaching on the 11th June, I knew I had to get my creative knit on and create something to go alongside the flutterby’s that Stitch Londoners were busy creating in homes across the capital.
Baby Button preparing herself for her first ever yarnstorm
The recent sunshine and beautiful summer days encouraged me to create a cheeky chap chilling out in the sun, lying against a tree watching the flutterbys float all around him.
little man just chilling out in front of his favourite gallery
a saturday afternoon, surrounded by sunshine, butterflys and flowers, what more do you need?
It was just typical that baby button wasnt too impressed by my graffiti and decided that she’d had enough just as I was trying to sew my piece to the tree! Possibly the youngest yarnstormer ever?
Together with Nintendo, we stormed Elephant and Castle to promote their new Wii game: Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Deadly Knitshade, Shorn-a-the-dead and myself headed on down to the grimy concrete filled area of south london to cover one of their benches in wooly sunshine, kirby style.
Kirby and Prince Fluff chill out on their new soft grass amoungst the concrete.
4 little felt and buttoned flowers grew up the railings behind the bench
With our storm complete, Deadly and myself headed off for some lunch… when we returned later all was not as it had been in kirbyland… Our newly left creations had gone to live a new life in a hopefully less concrete environment.
The sun has no clouds to keep him company, the flowers have wilted and kirby and prince fluff are nowhere to be seen
You can see what all this is about by visiting the Nintendo page here.
On a very cold Sunday a few weeks ago, the Knit The City girls and I descended on Picadilly circus to give a little bit of wooly love to the Eros statue.
We met before hand in a local pub and hastily stitched, glued and buttoned our finishing touches to our pieces, before heading to the statue to place them carefully at the base of Eros. As it was Valentines day the next day it had seemed only fitting that everything was love and valentines day related.
Deadly Knitshade chose to portray the fight between the 2 brothers – Eros and Anteros. (A little known fact is that the statue is actually of Anteros and not in fact Eros, although we all call it Eros).
Lady Loop and Shorn-a-the-dead decided to go on a Will and Kate theme, with Shorn-a creating the doting couple in knitted form and L.Loop hand stitching weblinks onto red hearts to hang from the bottom of the statue- genius idea if you ask me!
I went along the love theme and created a big L O V E, some buttoned hearts and a huge blingtastic engagement ring.
Last but not least came our storming finale – deadly had brought a huge 6 metre pole along, which we each fastened a heart to. With us all directing and concentrating so much on the task in hand, we hadnt noticed a large crowd growing behind us. When we finally attached the hearts to Eros’ bow we heard a great cheer… a first for our yarnstorms, and a great feeling!
My buttoned heart for Eros' bow
Lady Loop and Deadly Knitshade carefully position the ever swaying 6 metre pole.
Knit The City: If we cover our faces you'll have no idea who did it.
A few months back in 2010 I joined up to The Sketchbook Project. You sign up, they send you a moleskin sketchbook and you had until January 2011 to fill the sketchbook and send it back. The project is a different kind of art show that is touring America and ending up as a permanent exhibition at the Brooklyn Art Library in New York. Its a pretty cool oppurtunity and one I wanted to be involved in.
But that was back in August 2010 and January has certainly snuck up on me. With an imminent house move and a baby due in a few months I needed to get a move on and quick! Luckily I managed to get it all finished and spread the wooly word of graffiti!
Although drawing and painting is not my strongest creative area, I wanted to have a play and put together all of my graffiti projects in a sort of self made book.
Here are my favourite pages. I filled the pages with picures of my graffiti as well as brainstorms and sketch ideas. If you are in America, you can actually view the book when it comes to a city near you. You can view when and where here.
With it being wool week, we had been pretty busy. We yarn stormed on London Bridge on Sunday, and created an installation for the John Smedley Brook Street store on Monday. Imagine our surprise when we were asked to storm the studio of This Morning on Thursday! Here’s our appearance:
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