KnitRiot's Wooly WALLart Is A Heartwarming Gift For The Homeless (PHOTOS)

This heart (and neck, head and hand)-warming story comes courtesy of some caring crafters.

On Saturday, a group of Los Angeles guerrilla knitters "bombed" a homeless shelter with hand-knit scarves and hats. The Los Angeles Times reports that the gifts were displayed on "Wooly WALLart" at the PATH homeless center in East Hollywood, waiting for residents to walk by and take their pick of the lot.

One KnitRioter, who asked to remain anonymous (in accordance with the ethos of the group), shared with the Huffington Post what it was like to leave the gifts. "We actually laid it out in the very early morning because we wanted to be very stealth about it," she said. They scurried away before any staffers at PATH could catch them, said our source, and it looks like their plan worked. "I don't think they even know about it," said the KnitRioter, "unless they were to look at their security tapes."

A call to the PATH homeless center was not immediately returned.

Later on in the day at 9am, one of the members returned to see what had become of the display. "She saw people on the street wearing the hats and scarves, but otherwise everything else was gone," said the source.

KnitRiot sent out the call for this latest project in September on their blog, asking for finished scarves and hats for their "next knitbomb strike." In the past, they have yarn-bombed a tree outside a Los Angeles public elementary school, inviting children to take the art supplies they had hung from the branches. The sign next to the tree said that the display was "a wish for LAUSD to have more funding for arts education."

These photos of anonymous KnitRioters preparing the wall courtesy of KnitRiot.

Comments

[Steve Rockett]

02:02 AM on 12/21/2011

I attended a luncheon today and everyone was encouraged to tell a personal Christmas story. It was amazing how many donate, collect, feed, and support those who are without. Extraordinarily heart warming. For my part, I am Santa to five kindergarten classes of children from low income families. A few of us pitch in for gifts for the kids. This year I heard more requests for basic things, like a home, a tree, a teddy bear. It rips my heart out. Please let's work together to help all Americans, not just the rich. Incidentally, if you want the Christmas spirit, hang with a 5 year old, if mom says it's okay. They will enrich your sense of belief.

[windwolf]

10:10 PM on 12/20/2011

Their well-meaning action reflects a saying from the carnival world, "Good try, but no cupie doll." I picture knitters, sitting and knitting in their warm houses, expressing their caring and concern for those living close to the elements, or in some homeless shelter, invisible to them, never really knowing any of them, not having a clue to what their desperate lives are like. Then proceeding to go out on a "lark" an amusing adventure, an escapade "distributing" their creations. Somehow it doesn't ring true for me. It having fun around a profoundly tragic, collective horror story. Which amounts to making light, or trivializing people's plight. Native American sensibility says, "You can't know another man until you walk a mile in his moccasins," i.e. experience what he/she experiences. I heard of a social worker whose clients were homeless people. She decided one day to directly experience what they experience every day. She proceeded to remove the front passenger seat from her large sedan, and lived in her car 24/7 for one month. It totally transformed her perception and relationship to her clients. Maybe if these concerned revelers had similar experiences they would spend their time pro-actively fighting the socio-economic/political indifference to what has become a caste of people that we treat much like the untouchable caste in India is treated. - With contempt, indifference, and prejudice, and at best with "bleeding heart" compassion Which amounts to a national disgrace we all share with shame.

[Steve Rockett]

02:03 AM on 12/21/2011

We all do what we can.

[the gentrys]

07:01 AM on 12/21/2011

Then what your saying it's better to do nothing,don't you believe most of these people help in many other ways,Indifference I don't think so,a learning experience, a road to doing more. These people are half full,your just negative.

[windwolf]

05:14 PM on 12/21/2011

I never said or implied that. These people,(I used to be one of them), need to be treated as valued people. They would be more appreciated being treated equally by personally handing them the gift, and letting them know that you and I care about them and their plight. Showing them that they're being valued for just being a human being. Leaving anonymous gifts is what we do for children, not adults. It requires more effort and even courage to have such a transaction with someone who is living a life of sheer desperation. It often evokes our own fears for our survival, which most of us don't want to look at. Frankly these people to me, as I've been, are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. 2012, will more likely see more of our formerly middle class neighbors living on the streets.

I come from a different sensibility than most folks I guess, having received my first pair of PJs from welfare as a child during the aftermath of the first Great Depression. Then my father would continually bring home down and out people, and share our food with them, and give them whatever clothes and money we could hardly spare. When my aunt Mary married into wealth, she spent her days throughout her life, personally delivering baskets of food and clothes to poor families. These were my primary teachers about what it is to be a human being in the full sense of the word.