The world according to MayaB

What inspires you? And where do you go to find inspiration? What about the difference between when you are happy, healthy and bursts with energy, and when you are mellow, tired and the energy is low? I’m thinking a lot about this these days, and would really like to know your thoughts about this. I would be very pleased if any of you would take your time to comment and tell me: what inspires you?

Speaking about myself I would have to say that a cup of delicious vanilla sweetened latte and good atmosphere at one of my favourite cafés is a good start. Something else that really inspires me is the way people more and more tend to incorporate their attitudes and values into their knitting. It seems to me that the acknowledgement of knitting as a means of expression of ideas (as well as and in addition to expressing cultural heritage and esthetical design) is gaining wider and wider territory. Guerilla knitting, also known as graffiti knitting, is a good example of this. I’ve been a fan of guerilla knitting ”forever”, and I have written about it earlier here and here. Guerilla knitting is dressing different objects in public space using knitting and crocheting. The reasons for doing this can be many. Some emphasize Guerilla knitting as a means to feminize the growing world of street art through an expression that is both beautiful and nondamaging. This is an article with this perspective published by CNN last December. Others emphasise Guerilla knitting as a way of claiming public space back to the public, protesting against the commercializing of our common urban environments through visual pollution caused by multibillion companies and their massive advertising campaigns. No matter how you chose to define it, Guerilla knitting, like all knitting, is a manifestation of the personal voice, the difference is that it is public and visible to all so more people will have the opportunity to notice it. Any handcrafted idem is a unique individual statement, it cannot be duplicated or mass-produced, it represents an individual voice. It can, but it doesn’t have to be a result of a political or philosophical statement, or claim to bring any kind of answers to the world. It usually is a result of the immediate, the moment, of the inspiration. You are spending the day in the park, it is a warm and sunny summer day, enjoying the sun you knit up a little something by imagination and decides that it will be fun to stitch it up in a tree. Later, a cold winter day, someone notices your piece while rushing by and gets inspired! I often find the immediate, the in the moment expression, the most meaningful one.

Just down the road from where I live, someone has locked a white bike to the street light pole. It has been standing there for a very long time and no one has removed it yet. Maybe nobody notices it? When someone put it there, or why, is a mystery to me. What are they trying to express? This bike is screaming for a knitted accessory, and I really want to make one. Everyday when I go out I think to my self “the bike must have been removed now, and I didn’t get around to knit for it”. But every day it’s still there, naked and white, waiting for me to come and stitch it up. Now, that is what I call inspiration!

Hva inspirerer deg? Og hvor leter du etter inspirasjon? Hva med når du er frisk og glad, til forskjell med når du er sliten og tungsindig. Jeg tenker mye på dette med inspirasjon for tiden, og vil veldig gjerne vite hva du tenker om dette. Jeg blir veldig glad om du tar deg tid til å legge igjen en kommentar og fortelle meg litt om hva som inspirerer deg.

Rett ned i gata der jeg bor har noen låst fast en hvit sykkel til lyktestolpen. Sykkelen har stått der veldig lenge og ingen har fjernet den enda. Kanskje det er ingen som legger merke til den? Når den ble plassert der, eller hvorfor, er meg et mysterium. Hva skal den uttrykke? Denne sykkelen formelig roper etter strikket tilbehør, og jeg har så lyst til å lage noe. Hver dag når jeg skal til å gå ut så tenker jeg for meg selv at nå er den sikkert fjernet, og det før jeg rakk å strikke til den. Men neida, den står der fremdeles, like hvit og naken, ventende på at jeg skal komme å kle på den. Nå, det er hva jeg kaller inspirasjon!