Gangster Knitters, Yo yo yo…
Knitting on benches, trees, fences and road signs seems to be the new guerrilla gardening. Now, rather turning up with rakes and spades on a disused plot of land to create a veggie patch, people are meeting at the secret rendezvous (possibly in knitted balaclavas) often in the dead of night, armed with needles and wool to ‘liven the place up’. It’s been described, by some, as the world’s most ‘inoffensive graffiti’, happy street-art and hugs for all.
The craze is being reported all over the place from New Jersey to New Zealand, Finland, and Canada to the UK. In the Auckland district of Parnell, in New Zealand Knitty Graffity got 14 knitters together to create a heart fence (described by some as like a ‘group hug’!?) with 105 knitted hearts for valentines day, while entire trees have been knitted in the USA; and random squares of blanket knit have been spotted on benches in coastal towns in the UK.
Magda Sayeg, founder of the original knit graffiti crew Knitta Please, says she works to redefine a craft that has been relegated to the stuffy attic of people’s brains and dismissed by a limited vision for knitting’s purpose, its function, its practitioners. Some would say this is harmless, charming and updating an old art however, according to the ‘needles and spray cans at dawn’ debate on Deputy Dog’s site, all is not as it seems and the guerrilla knitters may not be as inoffensive and charming to everyone as initially believed. These Gangsta Knitters (YES, they really call themselves this too) have enraged the ‘true graffiti’ artists by calling themselves ‘graffiti artists’ and those, armed with spray cans – rather needles, are not at all happy about it. The spray canners are further enraged, since the knitters have started referring to their undercover knitting as ‘tagging’ (Realgraf: ‘This isn’t graffiti it’s a joke’)! Not to mention local authorities in a borough of New Jersey, America who are trying to make it illegal. According to reports an unknown person, dubbed the ‘MIDNIGHT KNITTER’, has been making sweaters for lampposts and trees in West Cape May and the police are after them for interfering with public property
Who knew something as inoffensive as a bit of hand-knitted stuff (which we love here at Ollie&Agnes, as you know) could cause such consternation and debate … and who knew there was so little crime in West Cape May in New Jersey!
*Photos supplied by Knitty Graffity
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PS: If you are keen on knitting, check this out……
