Hold your horses. This is just the bumper (aka teaser trailer) for the Knitta documentary (!!) showing before 20 percent of all SXSW Film Fest screenings. We are so excited to work with Sarah Gonzalez as the project continues. Many thanks to her and her crew.
For those of you following the Blanton Knitted Wonderland exhibit, Sarah filmed the March 4th installation and has been blogging about her experience. Check it out! And send her love on twitter too – @Gonzography.
These knitted stairs are in the lobby at GSD&M, an Austin-based ad company that’s teaming up with Google to sponsor The Industry Party on Monday night. As an official SXSW event, musicians Mother Truckers and J Roddy Walston & the Business will be featured, along with local Austin artists – including the legendary Daniel Johnston, Hugh MacLeod, Ian McLagan, Dave Mead, and of course Yours Truly.
Special thanks for this installation goes to our own Catherine Smith, without whom the project would not have happened.
(Don’t have a badge? Don’t worry! There’s still time to RSVP. Email SXSWparty@gsdm.com.)
In celebration of South by Southwest, Knitta’s been busy with a few goings-on this week. Above are the letters for Ink PR’s green room at the Austin Convention Center. Find more pictures and press about the thINK! room around the web: CNN, Ink’s blog, and Austin360.
Also, we’re putting the finishing touches on an installation at the GSD&M office in preparation for The Industry Party, a SXSW event sponsored by the Austin-born ad company and Google on Monday night. Other local artists will be there: Daniel Johnston, Hugh MacLeod, Ian McLagan, Dave Mead + many more. PLUS! live music from the Mother Truckers, J. Roddy Walston and the Business, and more. Show up at 7pm Monday to kick off the week!
photo courtesy of The Griffin School
Part three of “meet our volunteers,” a series highlighting the Austin community crafters who are making A Knitted Wonderland happen.
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This semester, Magda has been an adjunct teacher at The Griffin School, a private Austin-area high school. Every Wednesday, she meets with a class of teenagers to teach the art and craft of knitting and hang out with some cool kids along the way. The group of 13 students is contributing to a total of 4 trees for the Blanton project. When they’re not knitting, they’re doing other fun stuff: for example, Ceci is teaching Magda to play eukalale.
For more photos, visit the Griffin School’s flickr page.
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A Knitted Wonderland will be on exhibit March 5-18, 2011, in the Blanton’s Faulkner Plaza. The project is in collaboration with UT’s Blanton Museum of Art, coinciding with their latest exhibit Recovering Beauty and UT’s annual open house, Explore UT. Come out to see the installation and hear Magda Sayeg, founder of Knitta, speak on Saturday, March 5th.
In the meantime, visit the project’s Facebook page and read about it over here at the Statesman.
Part two of “meet our volunteers,” a series highlighting the Austin community crafters who are making A Knitted Wonderland happen.
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Meet Clara Bogard (right), a 5th grader, Amelia Long (left), in 6th grade, and tree cozy #48 made of Fibonacci sequenced stripes. The girls are students at the Girls’ School of Austin and members of the Knitty Gritties, an after-school knitting club. As the two most advanced knitters of the group, they were given the chance to design and create this project, with only a little help from their sponsors. Amelia says her favorite thing about the project was experimenting with the colors in the sequence. She also learned how to purl! Both Clara and Amelia plan to be on site Friday for the installation, and they can’t wait to see their finished product lined up with the rest of Austin’s knit community.
The group formed in fall 2010 and has grown from 3 girls to 10 students total, ranging from 2nd to 7th grades. Sponsor Liberty Heise notes that the group seems to transcend the normal social order of a school, with special friendships reaching across age divisions. Some of the girls were already seasoned knitters (Amelia has been knitting since she was 8), but others have learned to knit since joining the group. Knitted Wonderland is the group’s first large-scale project – but just wait, Liberty warns, “We are planning to knit bomb our own campus soon after UT.”
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A Knitted Wonderland will be on exhibit March 5-18, 2011, in the Blanton’s Faulkner Plaza. The project is in collaboration with UT’s Blanton Museum of Art, coinciding with their latest exhibit Recovering Beauty and UT’s annual open house, Explore UT. Come out to see the installation and hear Magda Sayeg, founder of Knitta, speak on Saturday, March 5th.
In the meantime, visit the project’s Facebook page and read about it over here at the Statesman.
Photo courtesy of Carolyn Bettelheim, a project volunteer.
One week from Friday, Knitta Please and a team of over 140 Austin crafters will cover each of the 99 trees in the Blanton’s Faulkner Plaza with knitting (or crochet). The project, titled A Knitted Wonderland, is in collaboration with UT’s Blanton Museum of Art, and will be on exhibit from March 5-18, 2011, coinciding with the Blanton’s new exhibit Recovering Beauty and UT’s annual open house, Explore UT. Come out to see the installation and hear Magda Sayeg, founder of Knitta, speak on Saturday, March 5th.
The most exciting part, however, is this: community knitters and crocheters have powered 99.5% of the production and installation of this project. We could not have made this happen without these amazing volunteers. Over the next week, as part of our thanks, we will be highlighting some of these crafters right here on the Knitta blog. Stay tuned to learn about the talent and enthusiasm behind the latest Knitta Please project.
In the meantime, visit the project’s Facebook page and read about it over here at the Statesman.
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Update:
Meet our volunteers – Heather Sutherland of the Knotty Knitters, Darrell Farris of Men Who Knit, The Girls’ School of Austin, The Griffin School
Willie Nelson was in Austin this weekend for the opening performance at ACL Live‘s new venue in the W Austin’s Block 21, coincidentally located on Willie Nelson Blvd. And KnittaPlease was on site to welcome him. We teamed up with Guerilla Suit to dress up the giant W on the face of the building, Willie-style. See coverage of the concert over here on Austin360, and check out this video of the installation (and note the Knitta’d iPhone cover at 1:40):
