Please join us for the launch of  The East London Yarn Triangle‘s attempt to knit the four-and-a-bit miles of the Triangle – in scarves. This winter we want to knit those miles as scarves to provide some real warmth to help rough sleepers in Hackney in their nightly battle against the cold. We’ll be kicking off the project with an afternoon of casting on and scarf-knitting in the foyer of the Hackney Picture House on 9th October.

This time it’s all about warmth

Dirty sleeping bags curled up on cardboard mats under railway bridges and in shop doorways, fear of abuse and always the cold: rough sleeping is a tough and unkind existence affecting increasing numbers of homeless people in Hackney.

It’s a problem that we think has a special resonance with us as knitters. We are after all in the business of warmth. We create warmth with our stitches in all sorts of ways, and so we’re thinking it’s time to look at how we can share the warmth with our neighbours on the streets.

We are now urgently collecting DK, Aran and Chunky wool to share with knitters who are up for contributing scarves to help wrap up Hackney’s rough sleepers this winter. The project will kick off at 12.00 noon at the Hackney Picture House on 9th October, a couple of hours before the screening of Yarn, the Movie. Join us in the Picturehouse foyer, where we’ll have wool and needles and comfy sofas to get started with. And if you fancy staying to watch the film, the lights will be left up just enough for you to carry on knitting throughout. Don’t worry if you can’t make it on Sunday. The knitting foyer will stay in place until 23 October, so you can pop in whenever you like to drop off or pick up wool, do some knitting and make new woolly friends.

All three shops in the East London Yarn Triangle: Knit with Attitude, Fabrications and Wild and Woolly will continue collecting finished scarves, and operating a yarn exchange for Scarf Knitters, throughout the season.

Are you in? Here’s the plan..

Scarves can be knitted from any yarn with whatever stitch pattern you like best – garter, rib or stocking stitch. We recommend casting on for a width of about 25 cm and knitting a 150 cm length. If you want help in calculating how many stitches to cast on with your wool, pop into any of our shops and we’ll work it out for you.
Once you’ve knitted your scarf, drop it off at anyone of the shops and we’ll make sure it gets passed on to a rough sleeper.
The Keep Hackney Warm Project is an initiative of the East London Yarn Triangle.

If you would like more information about the event please contact:
May Linn Bang 020 79983282, Barley Massey 020 72758043, Anna Feldman 020 89855231
email: info@eastlondonyarntriangle.co.uk