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No Fluff

 


Warning: this post is a departure from my normal knitting content and may be triggering for those who have experienced knife crime. 

 

I used to work as a secondary school teacher in a leafy suburb of Birmingham. In 2020 a student I had taught very sadly lost their life to knife crime. I realised I knew very little about this complex issue and felt quite naive. I have deliberated over this for quite a long time.... but... in a bid to educate myself better, I have set up a design challenge to highlight the issue and find out more about the organisations that are doing incredible work to help tackle it. I have called it 'No Fluff' to emphasise the fact that I am really not trying to make light of a complex issue here or virtue signal in anyway. I'm just a slightly frazzled ex state school teacher who can knit and feels the need to do something (however small) to acknowledge the issue. You are more than welcome to join in! Details about the design are below.

I have created a stripe pattern based on this data (see the graph below), which is taken from the Office for National Statistics. They take into account police recorded offenses involving a knife or a sharp object in England and Wales. More information about the stats can be found here. 


The design task is to add the stripes to any project you see fit, using any form of craft (knitting, crochet, macrame, embroidery... you get my drift). I'll be using the time spent making said object to read up on the issue and find out how to support one of the many organisations that are working to tackle it. 

Here is the stripe pattern: 


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