The Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse which is at home in Tate Britain was removed for the evening for Tate Loud, an interactive event created by Punch Drunk.

With a drop in knitting session run by Stitch London and interactive events throughout the evening, our work took over one of the gallery rooms with hints of the painting and the poem penned by Alfred Lord Tennyson running through the knitted cord.

Every part of the work was made from knitted ‘i-cord’ (a cord that is created from yarn by knitting a small number of stitches in the round, so forcing the stitches together into a cord) which took many hours to make.

Shorna the dead created the lily pad flowers, Lady Loop created metres of I-cord, Deadly knitshade made all of the many componants to the piece and I made the life size horses head. It was all woven together with organisation by Deadly Knitshade.

With the Olympics in town Deadly Knitshade and I wanted to give London a little bit of craft.

Although I had left a little piece of graffiti on the southbank for the Jubilee, we decided that The London Eye had yet to be given the Knit The City make over. Under the eye’s watchful gaze we set about making a new type of street art, one which has never before been done… as you may know buttons are in my blood – well they have been ever since two decided to lodge their way into my eyes, so we used some of our huge button stash to make a Union Jack.

The pattern was drawn onto the wall first

Deadly Knitshade adding yet more buttons!

Sometimes you just have to sit out the rain – but you’ve got to keep your camera happy and dry. And boy did it rain that day!

We encouraged passers by to help.

This was the first time that we encouraged passers by to help us. Everyone was able to take part, although some had to reach up high!

The tourists loved the union jack. The whole piece took over 4 hours to put up!

As you may know, normally we leave our art for someone to give a new life to in their home, but as this stretch of the south bank is private property we had very strict security on our backs for the whole day – and I mean every 5 minutes ‘Are you finished yet? What ARE you doing again?’

But, the plus side to that is that we can reuse the buttons for more street art… watch this space!

Have you seen any cool graffiti or street art anywhere? let me know… comment below, I’m always interested to see new works.

It’s been so long in fact that my little baby is now a full grown cheeky toddler!

I hope you didn’t start to think that the graffiti bug had left me, leaving me a shadow of my former self?

No, life I’m afraid has got in the way of a lot of things these past few months and blogging was the thing that took the hit. I’m glad to say that my graffiti hasn’t taken as much of a hit.

It’s definitely true that I’d rather I’d have done a lot more pieces than I have, but I have been dipping my toe into projects every now and then.

So, as I have rather a lot to catch up on, I’m going to be posting my projects up over the next week or so.

So much has happened since my Jubilee graffiti… I worked at the opening ceremony of the olymypics, a little sideline blossomed over at Studio 7t7, Deadly Knitshade and I did our first ever yarnstorm bootcamp on the Isle Of Wight, I’ve been busy making creatures professionally on films and tv shows (I’d love to tell you more but masked crusaders would come and kill me), we (Knit the city) did our biggest ever yarnstorm piece for Toyota’s positive power campaign, we yarnstormed for the Tate Gallery and I got engaged!

Watch this space for the gory details of these things and more in the next few posts….

But before my yarnstorm, here’s a little pic of the Queen looking at our display show casing Joey the Warhorse…

Here’s a little video of The National Theatre’s Salute to The Queen in case you didn’t get to see it.

And finally, here’s the little monster party I happened upon along the river as I went home.

They looked like they were having so much fun. Shame I missed the Pimms and cucumber sandwiches!

Each monster has 6 different shades of colour – one for each decade of reign!

What do you think? Did anyone else see any yarnstorms over the weekend? I’m sure a few were popping up for the Jubilee!

Or perhaps you want to keep those little critters for yourself?

Now’s the time! Come along to Craft Guerilla and I’ll teach you all the basics so that you can be wielding a hook in no time.

All materials you need to make a spring creature are provided and there’s even tea and cake included free!

Included in the price is also a 3D crochet kit with absolutely everything you need to make a flower hairgrip and a little critter when you get home and tonnes of colour photos and step by step instructions so you can remember what you learn in the class.

To book your place, simply go to the Craft Guerilla shopping page, scroll down to the bottom and add the workshop to your cart.

Hope to see you there!

I’ve had the idea for a long time.  I wanted the piece to be interactive with the people who found it.  By that I mean that each person could keep a little of what they saw.

And so, Pick Your Own was born.  16 flower brooches cover the knitted background.  The piece is in the middle of what is known as Bushey Village, very near to my fantastic Local Yarn Store (Mavis) and a good spot for people to stop and wander what’d happened in Bushey.

And wander they did!…

'If I hide behind her I won't get accused of taking a break'

First a lady exclaimed (while on the phone) ‘Oh that’s so pretty’ Then, when the sewing was complete, 2 traffic wardens stopped to admire the handiwork. (Surprisingly friendly for traffic wardens – I thought they all had a hugely thick layer of skin and grew horns if you looked at them? No?)…

'I wanna be a yarnstormer when I grow up Mum'

Then the residents of Bushey just couldnt stop themselves from taking a peak.

I hope that it will brighten up Bushey and make my little town smile at the sight of something different in their high street.

Thanks for making me feel so welcome Bushey this last year, and keep your eyes pealed, I may just leave another little present in the future!

It will be held in the beautiful location of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight over the weekend of Friday 19th to Sunday 21st October 2012.

You will learn everything you need to know about how to yarnstorm, with all your materials, meals and accomodation included.

So, what are you waiting for recruits? Head on over to Knit The City or Wightaway for more info and to book.

You can pay in installments too.. More info of which can be found on the booking page.  It’s set to a wooly weekend of wonderous mayhem.  I’m very excited to be a part of it and can’t wait to cover The Isle of Wight in yarny goodness!

See you at boot camp!

Please note: due to unforeseen issues involving radioactive sheep and an incident with a swarm of yarn zombies this boot camp has been moved to October.

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.

Graffiti Knitting needs YOU!

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!

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.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29338351@N02/6240442873/

“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: