Odds are you won’t have heard of ‘yarnstorming’. It’s better known in America as ‘yarnbombing’ but that probably doesn’t help either, unless of course you are a knitting aficionado or perhaps have been paying particular attention to the news.
Yarnbombing, or yarnstorming, or guerilla knitting or urban knitting, can be described simply as graffiti art, the difference being the medium used is not spraycans or paint but needles and wool.
Non-permanent graffiti
The idea of knitted installation art, a form of non-permanent graffiti, made its way from America to London in the mid 2000s where a group of knitters now known as ‘Knit the City’ took the idea from across the pond and adapted it.
Under the leadership of Lauren O’Farrell, alias ‘Deadly Knitshade’, the London yarnstormers moved on from the knitted ‘cosy’ of the Americans and added their own ‘stitched story concept’, where knitted amigurumi creatures (a Japanese style of crocheting small anthropomorphic figures) and other characters are put together to demonstrate an overall theme or story. A slight name change to the process was also employed. After the attacks of 7/11, ‘yarnbombing’ was felt to be too inflammatory, hence the friendlier sounding ‘yarnstorming’. There are now many yarnstorming groups around the UK, including a group of yarnstormers in Upper Hale, Farnham, known as the ‘Knitting Ne’er Do Wells’.
‘Knitchings’
Member of the Farnham ‘Knitting Ne’er Do Wells’ and part-time teacher Kathryn Hitchings, alias ‘Knitchings’, part of Bethel Baptist Church in Upper Hale, Farnham, caught the knitting bug at the age of 13. Brought up in a Christian home she became a Christian at a young age and was helped to overcome her lack of assurance by an old hymn which said that when you drink spiritually you will never thirst again. The refrain goes:
What! never thirst again?
No, never thirst again;
What! never thirst again?
No, never thirst again,
For he that drinketh, Jesus said,
Shall never, never thirst again.
She moved to Scotland from England at 11, but felt very isolated as an English Christian girl in a secular school in Scotland.
It was at this time that an older woman in the church taught her how to knit. Kathryn now describes that as her ‘woolly lifeline’. She has been an avid knitter ever since, knitting through her teenage years and at university where she made colourful jumpers while studying History of Art.
Knitting, she says ‘appeals to creativity’. She draws parallels between yarnstorming and what art is for — ‘to bring joy in unexpected places’ — and that by ‘subverting things a bit’ the viewer is able to look at something in a new way. For example, while living in Ipswich she co-ordinated a woolly ‘flashmob’. This was a co-ordinated dance wearing woolly hats in Ipswich town centre which went extremely well and caught the attention of the news.
Connecting with the community
As a Christian artist, Kathryn says yarnstorming is a perfect way to connect with a diverse community of people.
When she moved to Farnham with her family a little over a year ago when her husband Mike became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, she knitted a cosy for the tree at the bottom of her front garden. Also she knitted covers for the street sign right outside the garden wall.
‘The reaction was huge!’ she says. The next day ‘people were taking pictures and coming up to the house and asking what was going on. People in cars going by on the way to work were slowing down to look. Things spiralled from there. “Knit the City” didn’t quite know what was going on in Farnham!’ The ‘Knitting Ne’er Do Wells’ have come together since and been very active throughout the area. They meet regularly to knit every Tuesday evening. Their ‘yarnstorming’ includes knitting articles of clothing, like woolly hats, and placing these on sculptures around Farnham. The result is that people then start taking more notice of the artworks around the area.
In addition to all her work around Farnham, teaching and her family, Kathryn has appeared on several TV programmes, including ITV’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show, and has just recently been filming a craft programme with BBC2 which is set to hit our screens in October. The show is called Paul Martin’s Handmade Revolution.
Outreach and peacefulness
These experiences have allowed her to reach out to people and tell them about her faith through doing something she loves. For example, ‘a green room contestant [on the craft show] was very surprised that I was a pastor’s wife’, she says.
Kathryn also asserts that knitting has neurological benefits. ‘The repetitive movement of the needles and working the rows of stitches is very calming’, she says, ‘and has been a special help to those children with anxiety problems.’
Brushes with the police
We ought to warn our readers that yarnstorming is technically illegal. ‘I have been stopped twice by police’, says Kathryn, ‘once in Farnham and once in Basingstoke. Both times they were a bit bemused by what we were doing.’
What happened? ‘Once we’d explained, they laughed and let us carry on.’ Kathryn went on to say that when the Olympic installation at Saltburn Pier was vandalised the police gave the perpetrators a warning.
You can find out more by visiting the Knitting Ne’er Do Wells’ Facebook page. You can also catch Kathryn in Paul Martin’s Handmade Revolution on BBC2, which is airing in October.
