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Seven miles of pink wool for peace

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knit a 7-mile peace scarf Jaine Rose would like to share with you her thoughts on knitting a long scarf.

Or, as she puts it, in launching a crazy and rather wonderful direct action protest involving 7 miles of pink wool’.

Back in October 2012 she hatched a plan with Angie Zelter from Action AWE to get a huge crowd of knitters and crocheters together to knit a massive, and she means SUPER LONG, knitted Peace Scarf  to run between the Women’s Peace Camp at Aldermaston and Burghfield, the other Nuclear Weapons Establishment site in Berkshire.

It will, she says, be one big old woolly protest against the UK’s ongoing involvement with nuclear weapons, and the money our government is intending to spend in 2016.

And that is what she intends to do. And she need gazillions of women, men, children, pets, to dust down their needles and hooks and get cracking with her.

Yes, you did see 7 miles.

Crazy huh?

Then on 16 August 2014 we can all unroll this beautiful woolly scarf, and have a day of fun and funky guerrilla wool-fare as we yarn bomb the route between these two sites.

More of that to come in a bit.

So are you in? Are you?

Please see the ‘How to Join In’ page, and if you are up for it, drop her a line to say ‘howdy’. Her details are on the contact page.

After its airing, the scarf can be taken down and re-purposed into blankets for local hospices, emergency areas and war zones. Nothing wasted.

Here is her “Why?”:

The UK government is going to spend over £80 billion on renewing the Trident Nuclear warhead – yes, you did read that right.

That’s a lot of money at a time of financial austerity and recession.

And you know what? The world has a global arms trade worth USD1.74 trillion.

That’s a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere.

And the US military is the biggest single user of petrol, and that is why it has the biggest carbon footprint.

Now, it doesn’t seem to her like rocket science that we could invest in people instead, and move from a war economy to a green economy.

Cut the military, and address the root causes of violence, wars and terrorism.

Alright, so we are not all front-liners – but knitters can be a feisty bunch; what we need now is action and hands.

By picking up our needles and crochet hooks we are directly engaging in the idea of protest and having a voice.

Saying “listen up people, this is NOT what I want. Let’s change it”.

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