What sort of project gets knitters, techies, bikers and dancers working together. It could happen only in the cultural capital. Iva Pocock reports.
The world's most ambitious knit-in has begun in Cork, with knitters casting on the first stitches of what will be a giant textile record of the city's year as European Capital of Culture. Thousands of dextrous volunteers will transform mountains of wool into a monumental map of the city. Not a literal map, explains Kate O'Brien, a veteran knitter and coordinator of the ambitious project, but a map which reflects life in Cork during 2005.
"Instead of a single, still image, the Knitting Map will represent a moving, evolving response to the busyness of Patrick Street, the wetness of spring, the frostiness of November," she says. "It will take the pulse of the city over a year."
People's daily movements will determine the knitting pattern - hefty cabling during rush hour traffic, for instance, or a more sober stocking stitch during Sunday morning lulls. Bobbles of blackberry stitch will be used to mark unusual gatherings, and the weather will dictate the colour of yarn. "On stormy days we'll use dark blues and greys; during misty weather it will invariably include purples and lilacs; and on bright days, we'll use creams and light blues," she says.
So how will all this information be gathered? By using cameras in four city locations to feed live images to the knitting station at St Luke's Church, where weather stats will also be provided as well as information about cultural events and happenings around the city. This incoming data will be transformed into a live pattern on each of 50 knitters' computer screens.
With 5-millimetre needles and 120 stitches allowed per person, the lengthening creation will gradually fall down the steps of the purpose- built wooden stage, to a bunch of ready and waiting sewers who'll stitch each knitted strip together. By the end of the year, O'Brien reckons the 30-metre wide textile will be 300 metres long.
The map is the brainchild of half/angel, a Cork-based dance and theatre company. Their ambition is to bring people together and break down boundaries, says O'Brien, best illustrated by the perhaps unexpected involvement of bikers in the project.
To publicise the project and enlist volunteers, the Norries Motor Cycle Club, from the northside of the city, took artists to the front of the Crawford Gallery. There they formed a circle and half/angel director Jools Gilson-Ellis, clad in a hand-knitted costume, performed a dance stunt, on and around the parked motorbikes.
"These are really tough guys. They knew they were going to be slagged but they wanted to do something for their city," says O'Brien, who has also been a biker for 30 years - as long as she has been in the knitwear business. "They were fantastic. They even put a blind knitter on the back of a bike. It was great to have that breaking of boundaries."
When O'Brien arrived in Cork last year she hadn't a clue if there were any knitters around, but within a week of advertising in local wool shops "there were 200 signed up". Other recruitment and training workshops around the country have brought the number of volunteers, from all walks of life, to more than 1,800, with a target of 2,005, for the year that's in it.
Recruits include three-year-olds who have learned finger knitting (no needles required), 10-year-olds from Blarney, some young adults with learning disabilities, and blind knitters.
"We've loads of guys who have come out of the woodwork who learnt knitting at school. However, I can't say we've got the bikers knitting yet," chuckles O'Brien. Knitting enthusiasts from as far away as Africa, the US and all over Europe are signing up for shifts too, she says. "They're planning their holidays in Cork and coming for a few weeks."
A knitter since she was a toddler, and the in-house expert on RTÉ's Live at Three for 13 years, O'Brien is passionate about knitting.
"It's better than Valium. You just chill," she says. "The women just open up, and the stories get funnier and funnier. We'd be in serious trouble if there were mics around." At the end of the year the enormous textile will belong to the people of Cork, she says. "Personally I think it'd be good in somewhere like the airport."
To add your efforts to this creation, see www.knitting.ie