Why do I forget to take pictures?

I have spent a significant amount of time over the past year knitting and doing other crafty things. I’ve progressed from scarves in the beginning to learning how to knit socks, cables, interesting stitch patterns, lace, and I recently made my first sweater. The thing is, some of the nicest things I’ve made I’ve given away to people as gifts and I didn’t take pictures of them first! These include an oriel lace scarf, a pair of lace armwarmers, a couple of hats, several cool pairs of socks, and several elaborately stitched headbands. I’ve finally posted pictures of what I have left on flickr. I’m going to have to keep better track of my projects.

Beautification, Anarchy, or just plain fun?

I’m a little obsessed with what I’ll call Anarchist Knitting. I came to it through a Vancouver-based blog called Yarn Bombing. It turns out there have been anarchist knitting groups cropping up all over the place for the past few years, the most notable of which seems to be Knitta. Their objective is to beautify the urban landscape by “tagging” urban structures with patches of knitting. It’s also a movement to reclaim knitting as an aesthetic activity, as knitting is one of those things that we are usually only expected to do for others or for a particular purpose.

I’m drawn to anarchist knitting for other reasons in addition to these. To me, it seems like a way to not just beautify the urban landscape, but also a way to critique it. Tagging a structure draws attention to it, makes people acknowledge and think about it. How many telephone poles, signs, benches, mailboxes, etc. do you walk by every day without even noticing them? In a way, we are alienated from the very spaces within which we live. Not only do we not build them, we don’t even really see them. To go a step further, tagging doesn’t just make us think about urban space, it seems to me like a nice way of making that space our own.

The other day I tagged a sign in my neighbourhood. Two elderly women were walking by while I was sewing the tag on and they stopped to watch me for a moment. They initially looked confused, then one of them said: “You’re giving that pole something to wear on this chilly day. That’s very kind of you!” She wasn’t being sarcastic, she was genuinely pleased, if a little mystified. That’s exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

If you live in Victoria, keep your eyes peeled for more…