KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

It’s time to play with this iconic feature.

The BLM hedge first appeared in Dulwich Road as a Black Lives Matter action following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. It’s a big, beautiful statement of fury that has been carefully tended by its maker Tony ever since he first cut it.

Tony found a little fame in the summer of 2020 when local community newspaper Brixton Blog published a tweet about it alongside photos taken as he chopped at the privet with hand shears. By November that year, fame had spread when the hedge was referenced in a piece on the British love affair with privet hedges in the Smithsonian Magazine. From SE24 to D.C. in one small link.

I caught Tony last weekend, admiring the hedge with a helper who had just trimmed it for him. (After 6 years, you’re not going to be maintaining it with your hand shears are you.) He kindly – enthusiastically, in fact – agreed to me writing about the hedge in this blog, making a square in its honour and publishing a knitting pattern. Thanks, Tony – for your permission, but really for reminding us every day that This Has Not Gone Away.

I can’t segue from that into knitting without being ridiculous, so let’s just accept it together.

I set about mapping the letters on a grid and, assuming the usual estimate of 45 stitches and 60 rows, I can see it will be difficult to do justice to Tony’s expansive, elegant letters across a single width of the square. As you see below, if I give the B all the space it deserves, the L and M will be squished and vice versa. So the letters are a little generic.

I might be able to get a better estimate of Tony’s design if I stagger the letters, with one at a time going from from top left to bottom right. I’ll try it out on a chart, but I think the most likely solution is to set out the current version twice, one BLM above the other.

I’ve entered the letters in green on a white background in the chart, but my plan is to use just a single green yarn, knitting the letters in garter stitch that will stand out from surrounding stocking stitch to mimic the hedge carving. I expect I’ll have to play around with needle size.

Whether I go for staggered letters or two BLMs, one above the other, I hope to add three shades of green beads to the stocking stitch surround, because the square deserves some pzazz. The little circles in the chart suggest those beads.