Wednesday, January 17, 2007

bloody cold = time to street-knit

Through several degrees of crafty separation this made it into my inbox. Knitters take note!

Hello List-serve, I have kind of become media person for a little event called street-knit. It goes like this. Was in Winnipeg over holidays. Got along royally with nice lady Gladys who is 87 and knits for the street-kids. She was watching TV this one day. About street kids. It depressed her. So she started knitting herself up a terrible storm, wrapping up disinherited Winnipeg in one big loving scarf with matching mitts and toque.


Clever me notes how for Toronto knitting has become a verifiable subculture in recent years. So I'm like if people are doing this for fun and sociability anyhoo, maybe they'd want to drop off a couple hats, maybe one sweater and more than a dozen scarves to a shelter. Anyhoo. in researching this I piqued the attention of at least one city councilor, two shelters in our beleaguered west end, several knitters, and eventually came into contact with Sadie Lewis who recently started the program street-knit in the East End.

Have you been implicated in knitting? Know anyone who has?

Well, it's like the first day of winter out there and if you would like to knit an extra scarf, maybe some toques with wild or somber colours, mitts, even a sweater and would like to see it reach those (still!) without home despite being in our very home-filled Toronto, you can drop it off at local yarn-knit shops Knit-O-Matic (1378 Bathurst St.), The Naked Sheep (2144 A Queen St. E.) and The Knit Cafe (1050 Queen W.). Sadie and I will then make sure it gets distributed to those who need it.

Granted, this falls far shy of actually housing people but maybe next year I'll find a way to knit houses before winter comes!

Anyhow, concomitant to this, and because I'm me, I will be following this up with a little media campaign. So you might hear about us again. Anyhow, please forward this to your wool-minded friends and relations and rivals. And if you had any ideas to help make this a better campaign (you wanted to have your own knitting event to bring in some goods, etc.) gosh, well, let me know! Here or streetknit@gmail.com. Also if you are knitter interested in helping to maintain a streetknit blog, that would be grand.

Despite what you might have heard, streetkint is now proceeding into the winter and all through next year.I thank you for your kindness in advance.

Ryan Kamstra

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