Monday, November 6, 2017

Remembrance Day

Over the last months, I have been spending some time on a community art project.

I was very inspired by this one, where a group of Australian women started a memorial project for their veterans. Like Canada, Australia (and New Zealand and Britain also) use the poppy as a symbol for their war veterans.

My knitting group got pretty excited by the idea too, so we decided to start a local version, and started shopping the idea around to other knitting groups around the Lower Mainland.

We ran a public wet-felting session so non-knitters could contribute. It was a lot of fun and I think it touched a lot of people. We had men participate and even some children!

We've collected over 600 poppies this year. A group of us spent a weekend zap-strapping them onto a backing for the display. It looks truly amazing.


[the Poppy Project blanket on display]

Our local Royal Westminster Regiment has been very encouraging and their museum has lent us the kit for the display. We made it into our local paper and hopefully with the display looking so fantastic, it will encourage more participation next year!

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