Wool you join us

Knitting has escaped from the pages of old-style women's magazines into the lives of imaginative graffiti artists. Hayley Hannan reports.

Llama!" cries Kara Beattie as she walks in the door brandishing a bulging black rubbish sack. "Llama, free llama."
For Kara, a large sack of free llama wool is a score. She's one of six core knitters who adorn the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson with knitted creations. In the past five months the group has used all sorts of materials to craft knitted items and sculptures, turning knitting into an art form.
"It was an attempt to raise the profile of textiles as an art, not just as a domestic craft," says artist Alison Milne. "It's just taking knitting out of the home."
The estate is the Waitakere version of the international movement of "knitted graffiti". Creative knitting forms are all about. In one tree, a knitted kite is placed as if stuck, captured in the middle of flight. In the far corner, a cross between a Chinese dragon and a worm snakes its way up an industrial pipe. Across the driveway, a knitted speed bump sign warns drivers of the approaching road hump. Over on a back porch, a glittering spider negotiates its way across a woven web.
The key is imagination, says Alison.
"Basically, we are just a group of artists in one way or another and are not afraid to stick a needle in a piece and see what happens. We just did things and thought, 'That could go here'."
The group has finished making knitted sculptures for the estate's reception area and is working on a secret project.
Every second Friday, the multicraft women sit around an oval table and work with their chosen material. Alison weaves recycled strips of fabric around her knitting needles while another crafts lime-green raffia into a snaking rectangle. A circle of red knitted cord sits finished beside a knitted wire flower.
The size and shape of the tools vary. Marlyne's giant wooden knitting needles are specially crafted by her husband. Sitting in Maureen Weir's handbag are at least 20 pairs and styles of knitting needles she's collected.
Maureen is recycling wool back into a long multicoloured train. It has brown marks where bark has stained the wool, but it's still perfect for her project. She says the group is great for learning different techniques from each other. "And the company - it's terrific. And the teas."
This comment sets off a debate over whose turn it is to make the tea this week. The knitting needles clack on while they decide, eager to get into a bag of chocolate biscuits.
Woolled wide web
While this group has permission from the Corbans Estate Arts Centre to leave knitted graffiti everywhere, people across the world are taking to yarn-bombing public places.  Guerrilla knitters are responsible for turning trees into candy-striped, knitted caricatures and lamp-posts into multicoloured poles.