WHEN SOFT + FUZZY = HARD TRUTH
Sure, knitting a hat is practical. But it can also be powerful. Imagine if 1.17 million activists donned pink hats at this weekend’s Women’s March on Washington, D.C. That was the Pussyhat Project’s goal – a hand- crafted hat for every person who could fit at the National Mall on the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump. By the first week of January, project founders Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman estimated that over 60,000 cat- eared hats had been knitted. “Wearing pink together is a powerful statement that we are unapologetically feminine and we unapologetically stand for women’s rights,” they said on their website.
Knitters, crocheters and sewers around the world answered the call – making pink “Pussy Power Hats.” And what more appropriate medium than one discounted as a mere domestic craft? Knitting, crocheting and sewing are at the heart of craftivism. Writer and crafter Betsy Greer, who coined the term, says, “Craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger.”
The Washington Post’s Petula Dvorak, however, is not on- side with the shape and colour of Pussyhat Project’s craftivism. “This is serious stuff. It’s about human rights. It’s about the way 51 per cent of our nation’s population still gets less pay, less representation in elected office and in corporate corner offices,” she wrote. “The Women’s March needs grit, not gimmicks.”
Craftivism is no gimmick, though. There’s real strength in stitching. It takes care, time, patience and commitment. With each stitch, row builds upon row, becoming a symbol of something larger. The Yarn Mission formed as a response to 2014’s police brutality in Ferguson, Mo. In B.C., the women of the Gitga’at Nation crocheted a six- kilometre- long yarn blockade to protest the Northern Gateway pipeline. Craftivists from all over Canada contributed crochet chains that stretched across the Douglas Channel.
“This is not your grandmother’s knitting” is a popular phrase, but actually, it is. Knitting belongs to daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers. And so, hats off to the Pussyhat Project for using it.