Knitta, please!
A group of Texas knitters are making the world a little more... cozy
By Anna Maltby
Published: June 14th, 2006 | 6:37pm
It’s a Friday afternoon in May 2006, and tonight is going to be big for a group of Montrose, Texas street artists. Saturday is the famous annual Art Car parade in Houston, and the group has big plans for the trees in the median of Montrose Boulevard. But their mission doesn’t involve spray paint, stickers or carvings.
They’re going to wrap 25 trees in warm, fuzzy blankets, two feet tall and 30 inches long—blankets they knitted.
“We’ll probably also put antenna cozies on the cars parked around the neighborhood,” the group’s founder says.
Antenna cozies?!
Meet Knitta Please, the hipster movement’s answer to the knitting craze of the past few years. Sure, this group of Texas women (and one man) gets together to knit, but instead of creating baby blankets or winter scarves, the Knittas construct pieces they later use to “tag” everything from utility poles to the Great Wall of China. It’s a bold take on a pretty tame hobby, says the group’s founder, who goes by PolyCotN.
“I picked up knitting a couple of times and never felt the connection other people did,” says Poly, a 32-year-old clothing storeowner and mother of three. “When I got into this, I felt that connection—I needed it to be more daring or rebellious. And it’s very satisfying in terms of the actual knitting; you can make an antenna cozy in an hour.”
The Knittas, who include four moms, a grandma, and several twenty-somethings, got together in late October 2005 and have since spent many a Friday night knitting and tagging in and around Montrose and Houston. When traveling to other cities, the Knittas bring pieces with them to mark their territory (hence the Great Wall). All the pieces carry a tag bearing the group’s name.
They “take advantage of all the hokey holidays,” Poly says in her warm Texas accent; all their pieces on Valentine’s Day were pink, and “New Year’s was fun because we got sparkly yarn.” And if it’s not a holiday, the Knittas usually have a special project, like the Art Car scheme, in mind—covering all the light poles on a bridge, hitting a specific neighborhood, etc.
The Knitta crew works incognito, wearing disguises such as Mexican wrestler masks, Halloween costumes and even burqas (well, they’re thinking about that last one, at least). They refer to themselves and each other by nicknames such as LoopDogg, SonofaStitch and P-Knitty.
So far, they’ve successfully maintained their anonymity, though one fan caught them in action one night.
“She stopped her car and was freaking out,” Poly says.
And there are fans—many of them. They receive enthusiastic emails from people who have taken their pieces down to keep for themselves, and the group’s MySpace page (myspace.com/knittaplease) has more than 1650 friends, many of whom leave messages complimenting the Knittas on recent projects or media coverage. A high point for the crew was a mention by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment after they took a tagging trip to New York City early in May.
SNL is not alone in noticing the crew’s work. The Knittas have been invited to do some pieces at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s Labor Day weekend music and arts festival. Chocolate Films, a film production company based in London, will fly to Texas in late June to spend 10 days with the Knittas and shoot a mini-documentary about them.
Poly says several out-of-state fans have contacted them to ask how they can start their own Knitta crews, but Poly and the others were concerned that pieces they thought were inappropriate were being tagged as Knitta pieces.
“We encourage you to knit and tag and do everything we’re doing, but do it under your own name,” she says.
With that, PolyCotN hangs up the phone and leaves her store to go home and make some cookies for the Knittas.
“We’ll probably be up until midnight,” she says. “It’s a big night.”
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