The Knitters Have Done It!

The core team Mary, Melissa, Dawn, Diana, and Rosa.

This past weekend was the Junction Arts Festival, in the community of West Toronto Junction. A feast of musical, arts, and creative talent convened on Dundas West to show off their skills.
Wise Daughters Craft Market initiated a weekend long project that involved community, knitting, and helping those that don't have a home. We gathered together on the street to invite people to knit and donate a square so that we could put them together into an enormous car cozy. The loaned car was a Nissan Cube donated by Auto Share. Dozens and dozens of volunteers donated squares ahead of time to assist our project and we had knitters join in all weekend to knit and to learn how to knit so that anyone could contribute.
Many people walking by asked "why?". Why does a car need a cozy? The answer is because! Because its fun!!! An art project just for fun and also for helping those in need. All those squares that we assembled to make the cozy are going to be unassembled and remade into nice blankets to give to Street Knit who will then pass them on to shelters.

a look at the Cube before cozying

The cozied Cube!

Toronto Zoo Fundraising Project

I have a couple of ads up currently on the TCA website. For those that do not know the TCA is the Toronto Craft Alert. The greatest invention since carbohydrates. I can't get enough of checking it out to see what is coming up next in my city in the world of art and craft.

This past summer I went on a field trip to the zoo with the clients I work with. I took a little detour into the gift shop and found a wonderful skein of camel hair yarn. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I am still saving it for something special. It looks so good as it is I may never knit it up. Anyway, while heading home from the zoo by public transit (a 2 hour plus trip) it occurred to me that the zoo could be making their own yarn. The yarn I bought was from an animal far, far away. We have our own animals! I contacted the zoo right away and proposed that the fibre be collected and processed so that people can knit it up into wonderful things to be donated back to the zoo so they can sell them for profit. Three months later I finally got a reply and was told that this is a possibility. I may be able to get my hands on that animal hair after all! So I am putting together a project team so we can tackle this together.