Lauren, knitting pioneer and founder of Stitch London
By Kaf Blamire Monday 27 June, 2011 09:29
Knitting has long been associated with unwanted Christmas jumpers adorned with a combination of patterns and colours so garish that you start to wonder if your grandma has been replacing her arthritis pills with something more psychedelic. However, over recent years, knitting has moved up the ranks of social acceptability.
Lauren, organiser of Stitch London, is an ambitious believer in the power of knitting to give people a meaningful connection with their environment. I found her at a Stitch London meeting, where knitting enthusiasts meet together to knit and socialise. I scoured the restaurant near Waterloo for the flash of knitting needles and slowly people started to emerge with their yarn, some in groups chatting, others staring ahead defiantly as if focusing on some far off knitting mecca. I found Lauren amongst them to find out how her small idea has grown into a global phenomenon.
SNIPE: Why do you think there has been a resurgence in knitting in the past few years?
Lauren: I think actually all crafts have picked up in the last few years and I think from what I can see it’s a lot to do with people wanting to do something that’s a little bit less commercial and more hand made and putting their own stamp on things.
S: To me the whole arts and crafts resurgence seems to be a lot of women reclaiming things that for a while were perhaps perceived as a little bit domestic with negative connotations
L: Definitely
S: Do you think that’s an important part of it?
L: I think in some ways it is, I think there is a comforting side to knitting, and I think that’s why a lot of people do it. I mean, I learnt to knit when I was in the hospital. I was having cancer treatment, so I knew I was going to be in hospital for X amount of time so I kind of learnt to knit to have something to do while I was there and keep calm, like we always say “keep calm and carry yarn!” that’s our little motto.
But I think a few years ago, for a lot of people, it was slightly embarrassing to knit, but there are so many cool things you can do with it now and there’s also the graffiti side to it now.
S: Have you been involved in that?
L: Yeah, in a big way actually. We started on a few projects, think in 2001. It was quite a tiny group, there were only about 500 of us.. I was ill and when I got better I wanted to do something with knitting to celebrate. What I thought I would do is make a scarf for a lion in Trafalgar Square.. one scarf.. and run up there in the middle of the night and just put it on and then run away again. I told my idea to the group that came along that evening and they loved it, so they asked if they could make a bit of the scarf. I said yeah, and then the project grew and grew and grew and got bigger and bigger and I think it was 550 feet of scarf. So it was quite long for a scarf and people sent bits in from all over the world..it really took off. That showed me how popular knitting was for a start and also how you can do something completely different with knitting that isn’t just your jumpers and socks and everything else, but the initial idea where i wanted to go up and do it in secret didn’t happen. Cancer research came along, the press came along, it was brilliant, but it wasn’t what I had initially thought because it was my celebration for what I wanted to do but I also wanted to express the fact that knitting had made a difference to me and could make a difference.
S: So that encouraged you to do more?
L: I think it was in 2009 we had someone come over from America called Magda Siod who does yarn bombing over there and we arranged for a whole group of people from Stitch London to graffiti just for the morning and we put knitting all over everything and that was really good fun and quite an adrenalin rush with the last few, with the police being 20 meters away while we were putting the knitting in front of St Paul’s – it was crazy.
S: It’s hard to imagine them arresting some knitters though?
L: Well…It did work really well. after that I established a group called Knit the City, so there’s four of us and we do installations throughout London so we go in with our knitting and run away again. Now groups like that are all over the place, the thing with me is if I’m going to do something I’m going to do it big. It starts off small ends up big – like with Stitch London, we started off with 3 people we’re now hovering under 10,000 on the mailing list.
S: Wow
L: So with the graffiti knitting, I encouraged the group to think bigger, so we did the phone box in Parliament Square. We covered it in a phone box cosy and got told off by the police actually on that day (laughs) they gave us a stop and search notice “caught decorating a phone box in Parliament Square” – but they let us finish so that was quite nice.
S: Of all the ways to get arrested though, I would say that would be one of the best.
L: Yeah, because really if we are going to do it I want to do it properly, so for me the phone box in Parliament Square – everyone is going to see that and the pictures are lovely because you’ve got the phone box, then you’ve got Big Ben in the background, so you can see it’s London straight away.
S: It sounds like for you it was a personal beginning that has become something global. Do you feel a big sense of achievement?
L: I really do – when you have a life threatening illness you make a choice whether or not your going to feel sorry for yourself or your going to take over the world and I think there are only two options there really. A lot of the people I know have been through similar. You think I have been given a second shot at life, so I’m going to go out there and make a difference. What I saw through Stitch was that it was changing other people’s lives. It isn’t just that we are teaching people how to knit – they’re like a family almost. It’s a massive family at that.
