National Gallery Knitta Please Event

It is Saturday night.
We did it.

When Magda and Dan finished up there was still so much more.

Elizabeth, this is yours...

We began to cover the rest of the gallery.
Staff pitched in and pretty soon the Rodin was
guerilla'd again.
Not by me. I didn't do it.
Really.

Chantal is the curator for indigenous art, and she smells divine.
She wore a leather knit for the entire day.

Some say the measure of success in a thing is the ease at which it appears to manifest.
I say appears because no one will ever know
how much it took to get the job done.

The National Gallery has national experts in everything art.
Those oracles were consulted over the impact
of sticky velcro on cement,
temperature variations and long term weather
effects, even birds about to nest
came into the equation.
My ears were flapping like Dumbo
taking it all in.
(For those not born then,
Dumbo was a flying elephant and much loved by children in the olden days.)

Can you see yours, Knitty?

Conservation experts grew wide eyed and vigilant at the sight of Nikki's
sea glass encrusted mermaid piece and were happy it was
contained in it's own little bag.
Greeblies in the wood and shells, you see.
Mermaid got to be with a Henry Moore sculpture
in the pond. So appropriate.

Elin, this is yours,
and Geraldine, see what a little girl wrote on yours?
"I love dogs."

Did you know each velcro dot is capable of holding
up to 30 kilos of weight?
Neither did I.
These are the things gallery staff know, and it
separates the roos from the wallabys.

Influencing factors far and wide came into view and I had new found respect
for how anyone can pull off a pole knit at the
national end of the guerilla spectrum.

Gallery staff were incredibly warm, friendly and enthusiastic.
Not a bit up themselves.
While I nearly fainted at the sight of
the real blue poles
as I raced
from one event to the next, they smiled.
It's hard to be jaded with a Jackson Pollock.

It was Magda's baby. She was project manager.
I had the luxury of being a lackey.

It was not up to me to decide what goes where, but I was always
on the lookout for a piece from someone I knew.

Like Nic Hohn.
And Denise.

The tags made it easy to spot who was who.

Christina's grand work here honeycombed on the pole.

Working with Knitta Please has taught me so much.
Tonight I will sit on the bed, knit and ponder.

Sitting with the indigenous Aunties making beanies today,
we heard stories. This is how they learned to count; by crocheting.
They sit in stillness, but their stories are transmitted.

Later we were offered billy tea, hot damper and golden
syrup and roo tail, baked in foil on a camp fire.
They shared delicacies with us.

juicy...the fur seals in the meat, makes it fall apart in your mouth.

One woman travelled so far to see her knit.
Where was it among so many pieces? She couldn't find
it and was beginning to believe it was not there.
Her feelings of Not Being Enough
were etched on her face.

It was there on the pole all along.
She looked relieved, as if ready to believe her knit
was not good enough, and through that,
she wasn't good enough.

Her story is wrapped around that pole.