knitting a road trip

We’re diagnosing a case of wanderlust and taking a road trip. We got our hands on this pretty little MINI Countryman, but we’re making a few of our own adjustments before we begin. We had a ton of leftover (unclaimed) knitting from last month’s Knitted Wonderland over at the Blanton, so we decided to make this an Austin car by repurposing the creativity and passion of Austin’s knitters. With that project being so short-lived, we figured this would be a good way to get a few more miles out of the work and let the city enjoy it a bit longer. Just wait till you see us driving around town! (Please, no pile-ups on our account.)

Update on completed project coming soon…

images and stories from A Knitted Wonderland


courtesy of Shawn Thomas, click on image to jump to his Flickr

There has been much clamoring for an extension, and we finally got the okay from UT’s Keeper of the Trees. We are so pleased to announce that Knitted Wonderland will stay up at the Blanton for another week, until March 25th.

After you check out the photos below, click around these links to see the blog posts and flickr sites of all the hardworking volunteers. (I’m sure I’ve left some out, so if we’ve missed your link, please post to comments below! It will be added.)

On the blogs:
Lora-Lee Blalock at Just Orb,
Sally Villarreal at Sally Comes Unraveled,
Sandra Singh at Knitting with Sandra Singh,
Brenda Tharp at Art on Art,
Cristen Andrews at Bags Begone,
Velma Metz at Velma Knits,
KnitHacker,
and Poppytalk.

On Flickr:
The Griffin School,
Shanti Deva via Joey Marez,
immarci,
Sally Villarreal,
Carolyn Bettelheim,
and Daniela Lozano.

image courtesy of Patrick Larson, click on image to jump to his flickr

Magda with the crew from the Griffin School

Image courtesy of The Griffin School.

Image courtesy of Mary Roland.

Image courtesy of Mary Roland.

the Knitta documentary (bumper) @SXSW

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.

Knitta Please featured at SXSW’s The Industry Party

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.

Stop on by:

7pm Monday March 14th.

Can’t wait to see you!

(Don’t have a badge? Don’t worry! There’s still time to RSVP. Email SXSWparty@gsdm.com.)

Knitta Please @SXSW

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!

meet our volunteers: The Griffin School

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.

meet our volunteers: The Girls’ School of Austin

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.”

____________________________

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.