The World Wide Knit in Public Big London Knitty Treasure Hunt

Today, Saturday 14th June, was Worldwide Knit in Public Day 2008. All over the world knitting groups got together, large and small and knit together. Here at IKL we celebrated the day with the first ever London knitty treasure hunt featuring cryptic clues, celebrities, knitting around London's most famous landmarks, hunting knitty treasure and learning to knit and walk at the same time!



A massive thanks to everyone who came along to take part. We eventually had 20 teams and 63 entrants all of whom got well into the spirit of things and followed our clues from Waterloo, The Old Vic (below) along the South Bank, over Waterloo Bridge, into Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square (left) and home to the IKL shop via Big Ben and Banksy's Leake Street tunnel. Congratulations to the victors, team 4 Ply, a fabulous achievement especially as they produced the 2nd longest scarf! Late arrivals, team Unprepared who arrived about two hours after the first team had headed off and arrived back after the prize-giving ceremony with a whopping 117 points. They took home some prizes but due to their lateness they sadly didn't qualify but congratulations on a fabulous effort. Congratulations also to team A Tension Seeker for winning the WWKIP Day scarf challenge with a humungous 90+ inches long (beating the 4 Ply team into second with only 86")!

Along the way teams discovered bits of hidden London, they knitted on Routemaster buses, they knitted with policemen and street performers, pearly kings and queens and celebrities (congratulations to the teams who met and knit with Terry Pratchett and Una Stubbs!). We saw Laurence Olivier wearing a knitted hat, Field Marshall Monty with a legwarmer and Charlie Chaplin with a knitted scarf (all statues of course), and special mention to team Pop who, aptly, sabotaged the balloons of fellow treasure hunters in a display of ruthless competitiveness (which ultimately didn't do them any good!)

I hope a brilliant day was had by all. I popped over into town to search for teams mid-afternoon and got lost amidst the throngs at Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, but well done for sheer tenacity in finishing the course. We've even learnt to say "I Knit" in 21 different languages, including Urdu and Kiribati!

Please post your pictures from the day's events to the free I Knit on Flickr group. If you haven't an account you can join up now or send us the photos by email to info@iknit.org.uk and we can put them up for you - show everyone how you got on, and we really want to see Una!

A few of the challenges included:

knitting on a Routemaster bus - yes, there are still Routemasters running in london and a few of our teams managed to get on and knit on this London icon

knitting with a celebrity - only a few teams scored points on this ne. Terry Pratchett was popular with three teams knitting his presence, but top marks to the team who knitted with Una Stubbs (who was also an answer to one of the questions!)

dressing up statues in knitting - from Laurence Olivier and Charlie Chaplin to Frank Dobson's 'London Pride' sculpture, London statues were kitted out in knittiness from armbands and woolly hats to legwarmers and scarves

knitting with the Old Bill - London's boys and girls in blue were (for the most part) only too happy to pose with knitters for WWKIP Day!

knit at landmarks beginning with P, U, R and L - Ok, so we gots lots of knitting in front of the London Eye and the River Thames, but what about a Urinal!?

knit with a Pearly king or Queen - ah, yes, those quintessentially Cockney characters. We Londoners see them all the time right..? Well, surprisingly three teams did manage to meet up and knit with some genuine Pearly Kings and Queens!

find a knitty street sign - how about The Strand? New Row? Obscuring the letters of Wootton Street was a more creative entry!

Once again, HUGE thanks to all knitters...let's do it all again next year...?

Fighting for the right to...knit?

Knitting in public eh? What's the point? - that's the question I was asked by a slightly bemused German (?) tourist on Saturday as a bunch of us sat on the steps of Trafalgar Square with our needles out, big and small. After searching for an answer I came up with the idea that we were demonstrating a craft that many folk still associate with their granny (not a bad thing, surely) and that knitting is having a renaissance and it's, like, really cool, and hopefully we'll encourage people to take it up. Something like that. He said I was 'very amusing' and walked on. It was certainly a sight to behold, and I think at one point I looked up from my knitting to see a wall of cameras pointing in our direction that almost outnumbered those of us actually knitting!

Whilst Gerard was at the G8 last week, trying to convince some of the most powerful people on the planet to sort it out, we had our own little battle on our hands - fighting for the right to knit in public! No sooner had we settled on the said steps than we were approached by Security Guard #1 who was curious to know what we were doing and why. After a brief explanation he looked none-the-wiser and thus ensued a relaxed debate about sitting down and knitting. It would seem you can sit on the steps, but you can't sit on the steps and knit. I agreed to remove all signs of "World Wide Knit in Public Day" which I'd printed off and laminated for the occasion but it wasn't enough. Only when Security Guards #2 and #3 arrived was I told we were holding an unauthorised event! When I asked if we stopped knitting could we still sit here he got a bit flustered - I must admit, it didn't help that I chose my giant needles to bring along for showing off, which apparently made our little shindig a 'performance' - I told him it was nothing of the sort - "I'm knitting a curtain" - I said, in an "isn't that obvious" kind of sarcy manner. After much name-dropping ("I emailed Ken and he said it was OK!"), our arm-waving, raised eyebrows and incredulous looks gave way to him actually not being arsed in the end and we talked him into submission - as long as we were out of the way by 2pm so the march for Palestine couldn't be disrupted by our little performance. Is knitophobia a word? - in the 21st century you still have to stand up and be counted my fellow knitty comrades! ;))

All argy-bargy aside, it was a fun day. I met loads of new knitters, and, although after a couple of hours in the sunshine we were baking, it was hilarious to see the reactions of some of those mystified tourists. We even managed a couple of hats for the Innocent Drinks Big Knit campaign. The last few of us headed to St James' Park for a few hours, with some Stella (classy) and returned to the square for more brief knitting with the Stitch and Bitch London group who arrived on the scene after their crawl around London's landmarks. From there, more drinking at Walkers wine bar off Whitehall and a jolly good chinwag. A good day was had by all!

Thanks to Gail for some of the pics!