“Check out this tunic emblazoned with AK-47s,” begins the September 23 post on Lisa Anne Auerbach’s blog, www.knittersforkerry.com. “I made it to commemorate the end of the assault rifle ban which happened last Monday.”
“I know a lot of people who do textile work as artwork,” Gschwandtner says. These people are making “knitted things that are pretty far from the world of fiber, where the labor process is evident in the final product.” She started KnitKnit to bring together such people. Among its fans are ThreeWalls directors Shannon Stratton and Jonathan Rhodes, who invited her to participate in “Set Up a Democracy in Your Own House,” a monthlong series of events whose message is something to the effect of “democracy begins at home.”
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Gschwandtner also invited Cat Mazza of MicroRevolt, an upstate New York knitting collective whose projects deal with sweatshop labor and capitalism, to bring the group’s Nike Blanket Petition. Bright orange with a white swoosh in the middle, the 14-foot-wide blanket is a petition to Nike CEO Phil Knight in which each four-inch-by-four-inch square stands for a signature.
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“Effective political action is what people can do on a really personal local level,” says Gschwandtner. And even if it ain’t that much, she says, “well, this is one thing I can do and it’ll make me feel good.”
