Cool & Cosy
By Monelle Bryce
Located in London
phone box cozy by Knit The City
It could almost be a Missoni fairytale. Although it’s just about knitting; knitting is no longer associated with your Nana. The knit craft is a very cool pastime and it’s always special to make something from scratch. My fascination with graffiti knitting and yarn-bombing mainly stems from how this creative trend has been catching-on ever so quickly. There is actually a huge knit-on-everything knitting world out there where large woolen creations are literally providing cozy coverage for the urban landscape. Yes as psychedelic as it sounds garments or lifestyle articles such as installations of knitted rooms, life-sized animals, or random ornamental bits or furnishings are being looped out of multi-miles worth of natural resources (yarn) and being spread about cities to colour and warm-up concrete jungles and various other spaces.
Earlier this year I discovered an extraordinary New York based artist and crochet queen, Agata Olek who has had her wow wool-work emblazoned onto items as random as taxi’s to the large bull in-situ on Wall Street. Olek recently had an impressive exhibition at Brick Lane’s Tony’s Gallery.
This knitting craze first started around seven years ago by yarnbombing Mother Magda Sayeg founder of Knitta Please who first covered the door handle of her shop with a cute cozy then began venturing out onto the mean streets knitting for trees, concrete cones, then eventually offices, cars, and other commercial commodities. Sayeg, responsible for a whole new generation of knitted street-art budded several new knitting crews to follow with Stitch’n'Bitch, I Knit London, Knit The City (amongst others) very publically sharing their love of the craft. Even Harry Hill had an ethical knitted toy character for his TV Burp show.
This knitting phenomena may appear rather hippy and there is defo a 70s vibe going on in many of the major in-public knitting displays, though if you take some time out on days like these wet stay-indoors-and-be-cosy opportunities, you may find knitting extremely therapeutic and rewarding , uplifting even.
I collated a herewith knitting playlist of Bill Oddie followed by his contributions when in The Goodies, just for you to get in the mood and knit so I expect to see some wacky designs in your tweet pics!
PS: I’ve been told The Goodies may have been influenced by Monty Pythons, The Goons, Michael Bentine, and these wild in-costume guys The Banana Splits who apparantly all wore some pretty awesome chunky knits in their time. There’s a comp to enter too if you fancy competitive knitting:
Happy Knitting x
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