CRAFTIVISM: a call to knit

Are you a knitter with a conscience? Streetknit wants you to join in their house knitting project at, you guessed it, City of Craft.

Some words from Streetknit:

GIMMEE SHELTER

On Dec. 1rst Streetknit will in fact, in truth, in reality verifiable build a house out of knit-wool before your very eyes at the colossal City of Craft , 1087 Queen St.w, being thrown by some very crafty ladies, for a very crafty city. We have a crew of volunteers working around the clock (for the clock was in the way), blueprints, engineers, morale-officers, wool, coa-coa, hankies to dab our brows with. Our progress will be monitored by the nice people at New York's DIYThing over the coming month. Watch for us here:

http://www.diything.com/

Our knit house will also be mentioned in the Globe's lifestyle section on Nov. 24th.

AND WE WOULD LIKE YOU, NEEDLY HUDDLING MASSES, TO HELP US.

The house will be made almost entirely out of scarves and blankets that will then be donated to homeless shelters around town and homelessness-service providers to distribute to the homeless and nominally housed. Please bring us your blankets, scarves, or join us at City of Craft and take a seat and knit a little something for StreetKnit. Boy o boy do we have yarn and needles. We might give you a button for your efforts. A little button that says "Streetknit." And you'll be like, look, me and my needles almost did as much to address Toronto's chronic housing shortage than all three levels of government did in seven years, cool. Want to read more about that?: See this Street Health Report for 2007. Clack, clack, clack.

What's Streetknit, you ask?

Founded in 2006 by Sadie Lewis in Toronto, Streetknit rouses the knitting communities of Toronto, hobbyists, s n' bs), society yarn-darlings , needle-clackers of all ages to put needles together and spend some time knitting some warmth into an extra scarf, maybe some toques with affectionate or somber colours, mitts, blankets, socks, even a sweater and see it reach those without home. We hear report that the kids like it in basic black.

These goods can be dropped off at friendly-neighbourhood StreetKnit drop-off points: local yarn-knit shops Knit-O-Matic (1378 Bathurst St.), The Naked Sheep (2144 A Queen St. E.), Sew Be It Studio (2156 Yonge St.) and The Knit Cafe (1050 Queen W.). StreetKnit! will be distributing to homeless outreach programs all over the city again this year including Windfall Clothing , St. Francis Table, Scott Mission , Parkdale Community Health Center as well as future friends PARC and Out of the Cold. We also now collect yarn to distribute to groups knitting street knits.

Every year people in Toronto freeze to death because they have nowhere to come in from the cold. Since 2006, StreetKnit! has helped inspire and organize office clubs and yarn-shop drives and knitty parties to do our small part to alleviate this situation, craft drives with DJs spinning, knitting classes for teens and adults, and drives within offices to donate to StreetKnit!, combining fun and sociability with doing good for the community. See our site for more details of some of these past events and drives: http://www.streetknit.ca/.

We have been featured on Omni Television and City News as well as here or there and everywhere, all over the local print and blog and knit-blog media.

Interested in hearing more or organizing your own StreetKnit! drive?: contact streetknit@gmail.com, or ryan.kamstra@gmail.com and we can help set you up.