In contrast to the M.24 Chaffee, a different type of wartime knitting was organized by the Red Cross. Knit Your Bit was an effort to gather handknit garments for soldiers. Volunteers were part of a "Production Corps"and would knit everything from socks to sweaters. This was meant to support American Troops with warm clothing. The tradition is still alive today with knitters making helmet liners for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Production Corps represents social networking and network theory in that at the national level, there were many women and children knitting for the cause. Together they formed the Production Corps, yet they were not necessarily ever in the same locale. They were joined together through this invisible network of knitters who were all working towards the support of soldiers. Thus the knitters were all contributing in their own way to the war efforts.
Posters (Screenshots of Redcross website): Left, L.N. Britton, 1918. Right, Wladyslaw Teodor Benda, 1918.
In 2006, a combat tank from World War II was placed in front of the Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Volunteers were responsible for crocheting and knitting pink squares to construct a blanket to completely cover the tank. Though passerbys were free to contribute squares to the project. The "pink tank," as it is sometimes called, was a form of protest against Denmark's involvement in the Iraq war. Over 4,000 squares were used to create the blanket, representing the wide spread of global protest.
From the Pink M.24 Chaffee website:
Unsimilar to a war, knitting signals home, care, closeness and time for reflection... For me, the tank is a symbol of stepping over other people's borders. When it is covered in pink, it becomes completely unarmed and it loses it's authority. Pink becomes a contrast in both material and color when combined with the tank.
The artist responsible for the "Pink Tank" is Marianne Jørgensen. She got submissions from knitting groups from all over the world through the widespread network culture. Today, with websites like Ravelry, an online knitting and crocheting community, which has over one million members, Jørgensen probably could have expanded her outreach exponentially.
