Courtesy of Spins and Needles
Winter in Ottawa gets so cold, it’s hard not to engage in a little pathetic fallacy and feel a sorry for the naked trees and ice covered mail boxes. It sometimes seems as if the whole city needs a warm scarf and a cup of hot chocolate.
That’s pretty much the idea behind the Urban Cozy Project, the brainchild of Spins and Needles in partnership with the NCC. Basically, crafters from Ottawa, Canada and around the world are invited to produce a cozy - a warm ‘cozy’ covering - through crochet, knitting, sewing, quilting, cobbling, patching or even stapling. During Winterlude, the cozies will be used to comfort poor shivering trees, lamp posts and much maligned water hydrants (I’m looking at you fido) at two of the festival’s main sites.
Each cozy will be labeled with the name and city of its creator and, for those wishing to connect to the greater crafting community, a resource will be set up on the Spins and Needles Site and Flickr to allow them to connect with one another. The cozies will be set up at two of the Winterlude sites during the festival’s run from February 5 to 21.
The submission deadline for cozies is February 1, 2010. For more information, how to submit and FAQs you can visit http://www.spinsandneedles.com/winterlude2010.
I don’t really feel sorry for the trees. It’s cold for us humans. It’s very pretty, to be sure, but I would rather feel the crochet, knitting, sewing, quilting, cobbling, patching - but not the stapling! - wrapped around me.