The Echo

On Tuesday 15th September, Katoomba residents came into  town to find that guerilla knitters had been busy in the main street.

Street signs, trees, and telephone poles were wearing knitted sleeves in bright colours, some with crocheted detail and contrasting stripes. This is a first for Katoomba, where aside from some clever stencil graffiti last year, the majority of tagging is done with the traditional spray can.

The phenomenon of ‘knitted graffiti’ was started in Texas by Magda Sayeg, who felt that the world outside her window could do with a bit of brightening up.
Magda and her ‘crew’ adopted names like ‘loop dog’, ‘sonofastitch’ ‘the knotorious N.I.T’  and  “AKrylik”. These knitting guerillas, operating under the name of ‘Knitta’ have since gone global, and knitted graffiti has appeared in places as diverse as the Notre Dame in Paris, the Great Wall of China and covering a bus in Mexico City. In July 2009, Magda Sayeg came to Australia for the ‘Knitta please’ festival at the National Gallery, and took time out to tag Martin Place and the Bondi Icebergs.
In Australia the best known ‘guerilla knitter’ is Newtown-based Denise Litchfield, who organized a ‘group stitch’ project on the men’s Urinal in Taylor Square. See more of her work at her blog, grrrl+dog at  http://www.dneese.blogspot.com/