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.

The East London Yarn Triangle is four-and-a-bit miles long, or 466 scarves long. Our aim is to spread the word amongst enough knitters so that we can make those scarves real this winter and share some warmth with rough sleepers to help in their nightly battle against the cold. Please join the three shops in the ELYT this winter in our attempt to knit those miles as scarves and provide some warmth!

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 kicked off at 12.00 noon at the Hackney Picture House on 9th October, a couple of hours before the screening of Yarn, the Movie.

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. Pop by the shop and see if we have any yarn ready to be knit up into scarves for you, or drop by any stash yarn for us to pass on to a knitter.

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: [email protected]