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We’re having a pompom party. Come get your stitch on and help us make pompoms to decorate Stitches and Hos HQ, Hare and Hounds for the festive season.
Sounds to stitch to provided by Dorian Wood (aka Pete Prescription)
Wool and needles provided. All are welcome – you don’t even have to be good
Tuesday 27 November. 7:30pm onwards, Hare and Hounds, Birmingham.
(image taken from nervousstitch)
Are you a knitting champion?
Stitches and Hos invite knitters of all ages and abilities to take part in their knitting pentathlon. Come to our K2TOG pop up shop on Saturday 16 June to battle for woolly glory.
Events are:
Fastest cast on, pompom put, 300 stitch row, fastest skein wind and knitting marathon
Entry to knitting pentathlon is £1 per person.
Saturday 16 June 2-5pm, K2TOG pop up shop, Pavilions Birmingham.
For details of how to find the shop please visit here
Last week a group of stitchers braved the weather to install our Park Your Yarn commission in Wolverhampton. It was quite a dreary couple of days but we kept our spirits up with plenty of tea and biscuits.
For the past 5 weeks we’ve been holding drop in sessions all over Wolverhampton asking people to knit pieces. We had such a brilliant response with over 500 pieces of knitting being used in the final installation.
I’d like to say a big thank you to Helen, Lilith, Lauren, Cat, Vickie for helping out with the install. Also a big thank you to Katja for documenting the project and Zoe and Kate from Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Rachael and Cheryl from ArtYarn for making the project such a pleasure to work on. And finally a massive thank you to everyone who knitted a piece for the installation. It really wouldn’t have been the success that it has been without everyone taking part.
For more information about Park Your Yarn please visit the project’s dedicated blog.
I am very excited to tell you about our big summer knit graffiti project K2TOG – Knit 2 Together.
This summer we will be covering the columns on the exterior of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to celebrate the visit of both the Jamaican and American Olympic teams. A palette of 6 colours (red, white, blue, yellow, green and black) will be used to create the installation. The colours are taken from both team’s national flags and are also the colours used in the Olympic rings logo.
The project has been selected as one of the Kalaboration commissions.
To help make the work we will be calling on all of you stitchers to knit or crochet pieces for the final installation. More information on that later.
Right now we need your help to raise £2500 for the project. The money raised will help fund workshops in order for the piece to be made. We will be going out into the local community in order to pass on the skill of hand knitting to those who have little experience of traditional crafts.
The money raised will also help fund a pop-up shop in the Mailbox, Birmingham, a relaxing drop-in space where anyone can come to contribute to the piece and find out about the project. Staff will be on hand to teach basic knitting skills and local workers can pop-in over their lunch hour or after work to knit a square or just a few rows.
To support the project please visit the Sponsume website http://www.sponsume.com/project/k2tog-knit-2-together
I’ve recently won a yarn bombing commission from Wolverhampton Art Gallery to decorate St Peters Park in Wolverhampton.
I’ll be holding a series of workshops around various venues in Wolverhampton teaching people how to knit and getting them to help me produce the knitting needed for the installation.
The project – Park Your Yarn has its own dedicated tumblr site http://parkyouryarn.tumblr.com/
For more information on how to get involved visit the site.
Last week was our regular monthly hootenanny. Once again its great to see so many of you come along to stitch, knit or crochet.
I met Sheila Arthurs, an artist who is working with Friction Arts to create a knitted & crocheted coral reef based on an original project The Hyperbolic Coral Reef which was created and curated by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles. (There will be an opportunity for people to take part, but I couldn’t find anything online to link to).
A big thank you Gemma and Helga for providing sounds to stitch to. It was the second time they had DJ’ed for our hootenanny, their last outing being exactly one year before. Even a pile of CD’s without cases wasn’t enough to stop them playing their mix of 80′s pop, Birmingham gems and feel good classics.
Our next monthly hootenanny is on Tuesday 27 March from 7.30pm. We have sounds to stitch to by Friends of the Stars who’s new album Faith’s Meat Kiosk is out on 23rd April 2012.
Until then here are some pictures from the night
Next week Stitches and Hos will be holding a practical workshop for adults at Ikon Gallery. We’ll be looking at the themes and ideas in the current Sarah Browne exhibition in a fun and informal way.
Thursday 1 March, 2-4pm at Ikon Gallery
Places are free but limited, please contact Ikon Gallery to reserve your place.
If you can’t make it along to the workshop I highly recommend a trip to Ikon. Both the Sarah Browne and Hamish Fulton exhibitions are great. They also do homemade cake in the cafe.
Also don’t forget next Tuesday (28 Feb) is our regular monthly knitting hootenanny at Hare and Hounds. We’ll be in the back bar from 7:30pm. Sounds to stitch to by Helga Henry and Gemma Thomas. Wool and needles provided. You don’t even have to be good!
On Tuesday we had our first regular meet of the year. A big thank you to all that braved the sub zero temperatures to come along. It was good to see so many new faces (and a few old ones).
We had sounds to stitch to by Adam Chambers from ColdRice. A mix of 60′s garage, RnB and soul anthems. Thanks very much Adam for a really great set.
Here’s a few pictures from the night
Don’t forget our next monthly hootenanny is on Tuesday 28 February from 7:30pm onwards, back bar, Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham. Sounds to stitch to provided by Helga Henry and Gemma Thomas.
See you then
The quite wonderful Katja Ogrin took some marvellous pics of yesterdays install.
Yesterday I spent all day sewing pieces of knitting onto a large bronze bull. Why? Because I’d been commissioned by the Bullring to do so. Below lies the tale…
In April myself and a small group of knitters from Stitches and Hos tried to cover parts of the Bullring with knit graffiti. Within 10mins of tagging the bull, 2 security guards came out and told us to leave. We ended up putting our pieces around the city centre instead (more info here). However, I still wanted to knit graffiti the Bullring. That place was still on the list. I knew that I’d have to go back, I just didn’t know how or when.
On 25 October I received an email from Lola Ralph through the Stitches and Hos website. She had seen the groups previous knit graffiti exploits and thought we might be interested in decorating the Bullring Bull for Christmas. I thought that all of my knit graffiti Christmas’ had come at once.
We set up a meeting to discuss ideas and came up with making the Bull a Christmas jumper. There was however one small catch. The work had to be done by 1st December. Just over a month…
Before I accepted the commission I put out a call to everyone who had taken part or expressed an interest in our knit graffiti. There was no way that I was going to be able to do this alone. Once I’d found out if anyone was available to help me I went to measure the bull. It was at this point I realised the enormity of what needed to be done. His neck was 238cm around, his body was 250cm long and he was 367cm around his waist.What a beast.
So I set about devising a pattern and a way to make the work. I also started shopping for wool. The budget was really tight so I needed to be canny about what wool we could use. I’d been given a colour pallette by the Bullring which I needed to adhere to and I’d agreed to include a sparkly collar to make the jumper more festive. Mikayla at Fibre Flurry in Kings Norton came to my rescue. So wool was ordered and a pattern devised. All we had to do was knit more than 12m² in just over 3 weeks.
The 3 weeks flew by and everyone worked really hard to ensure that all the pieces were finished in time. Yesterday I went with Vickie, Lilith, Helen and Emily with a suitcase full of knitting to sew it all together.
I hadn’t really thought about what a stir we would cause whilst we were installing. There was a constant stream of questions and comments from shoppers and passers by. Most people seemed cheered by his new attire, although there were some people who didn’t like it.
Here are a few pictures of the piece being installed taken by Rhiannon Davies.
I cannot thank the team enough, it really wouldn’t have been possible without you. Vickie, Emily, Helen, Lilith, Rhiannon, Nicola, Natalie, Sharon and Sam I salute you. Also big thanks to Katja for documenting the install, Mikayla at Fibre Flurry for doing a Saturday morning dash to Leeds to make sure we had the wool on time, support and much needed encouragement from everyone in Wardrobe at Birmingham Royal Ballet especially Lorna and finally extra special thanks to Matt who double checked my sums and believed I could do it.
