Commit to Knit. Commit to Quit. Get Committed!

Want to help knit the first WMDcozy? Visit our site and Commit to Knit. Not a knitter? We are also looking for drawings to add to our cozy. Visit us and upload (or mail) a drawing. No knitting? No drawing? Do you have a cache of weapons that keeps you from sleeping at night. Visit our Commit to Quit page and learn how to re-purpose your weapons for a more peaceful use. Got a knit-in or other WMDcozy event? Let us feature you on our site.

Burncast features WMDcozy: an interview with co-founder, Tracey Cockrell.

Burncast, the podcast mechanism of BurningMan, features an interview with co-founder of WMDcozy, Tracey Cockrell. Cockrell's interview is toward the end of the cast. Click on this link to hear the interview: Burncast #053 - CHAIcast.

WMD Cozy to Be Featured at Maker Faire

Maker Faire weekend is just 4 weeks away on May 19th and 20th. The location: The San Mateo County Fairgrounds, just 15 minutes south of San Francisco.

The best way to describe this family-friendly weekend is part science fair, part craft fair, part county fair, and part Burning Man.

A two-day, family-friendly event celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, science projects, and the do-it-yourself (DIY) mindset, Maker Faire is for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things. We call them Makers. Check it out: http://makerfaire.com

Here's a small taste of the line up: Survival Research Labs (SRL), Five Foot Russian Submarine, Junkyard Jet, Bazaar Bizarre, Silicon Death Valley, RoboGames' Combat Robots, Power Tool Drag Races, Neverwas Haul, Life-size Mousetrap, Walking Robotic Chariot, Build Your Own Blinkybug, The Electric Giraffe, The Disgusting Spectacle, Tomato-basket Dragons and Whales, Internet Crane Game, The Art of Motion Control, Puppy Mover Monorail, Model Rocket Video Camera, Hydrofoils (homemade, human-powered, ornithopter and wooden), Chris Benton's Kite Aerial Photography, Electric Supercars, Swap-O-Rama-Rama, Roobma Hacking, Winners of the Most Spectacular Failures contest, WMDcozy and acres more...

Maker Faire is anticipating a huge turnout (last year they had north of 20,000). But you can avoid the lines and save yourself some bucks by purchasing tickets online: https://store.makezine.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=35 BUT CUTOFF FOR ADVANCE TICKET SALES IS MAY 10.

And, if you're really itching to produce something for Maker Faire, here's your chance. This Earth Day, April 22, Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC) and MAKE magazine kick off a three-part Earth Day extravaganza. On Earth Day, ACCRC and MAKE will be collecting any household electronics—-including old projects, failed inventions, and half-finished prototypes—-and diverting them to ReMake. Once all of the electronics have been collected, a team of makers will work for 24 hours, April 28-29, to create new, amusing, and quirky items. ACCRC will provide internet, sleeping quarters, food, and plenty of toys to aid makers in the quest for creating the ultimate new gadget. The reused items will then be displayed at this year's Maker Faire, May 19-20 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, showcasing how a little innovation can make the old new again. Who: ACCRC and MAKE magazine What: Bay Area Electronics Recycling Event Where: Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC) 1501 East Shore Highway Berkeley, CA 94710

When: Step 1: Earth Day, April 22, 2007 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Donate your old electronics, computers and/ or appliances Step 2: ReMake, April 28-29, 2007 Makers will gather to create new gadgets Step 3: Maker Faire, San Mateo Fairgrounds, May 19-20, 2007 Remade items will be on display So we hope to see you at Maker Faire. Buy your tickets online before May 10th to avoid lines and save money. And if you can, swing by the ACCRC and MAKE magazine ReMake on April 28th and 29th in Berkeley.

Why We Need to Get Knitting and Gnashing

Wild Gas Chase

Fear over chemical weapons -- the real ones -- grows

The Bush administration claimed that Iraq harbored up to 500 tons of chemical weapons, but teams of investigators came back empty-handed. Perhaps the U.S. should have invaded Australia -- or China, or Russia, or, heck, itself. These countries each possess a share of the world's estimated 8 million chemical weapons, often unaccounted for and stored in facilities of unknown safety, and environmentalists are among the many groups raising a red flag over the problem. The 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention gave signatories, which include the U.S., Russia, and India, 10 years to destroy their declared chemical munitions. How's that going? As of last year, the Russians had eliminated 1 percent, the U.S. 20 percent. Often the delays have to do with methods of disposal -- most pollute the surrounding environment and are opposed by local communities. The U.S. Army's initial cost estimate for destroying the weapons was $1.7 billion; two decades later, it's spent $25 billion and counting. Still, says Global Green USA's Paul Walker, "the cost of getting rid of them is a small fraction of what we're spending in Iraq."

From the Grist Mill

straight to the source: The State, Associated Press, Charles J. Hanley, 25 Sep 2004

Let’s Get This Ball Rolling: An Invitation to Knit

We wanted to enlist your help with a new knitting/political action/ art collaboration WMDcozy। (http://www।wmdcozy।com) WMDcozy is a public collaboration that invites anyone to help design and knit giant cozies for real weapons of mass destruction. The brainchild of artist Tracey Cockrell and writer M. C. Boyes, WMDcozy is an effort to create constructive conversations about government-sanctioned violence using knitting and art as tools to literally put weapons to bed.

The first WMDcozy is designed to fit a single ICBM Peacekeeper, the last of which was fully decommissioned on September 19, 2005. The Peacekeeper was part of a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile array designed for nuclear weapons delivery and deployed by the United States starting in 1986. At a modest 71 ft 6 in (21.8 m) in length and 7 ft 7 in (2.3 m) in diameter, the Peacekeeper requires a mighty big cozy!

We are looking for knitters to, well, knit squares for this, and artists (even bad ones--especially bad ones and children) to contribute to the design of the cozy, which we will convert into a knitting pattern and post on the Commit to Knit pattern section of our website for some lucky knitter to work on. If you could help us by visiting the site, listing us on yours or simply passing the information on, we would be grateful. (BTW, this is a collaborative DYI/art/action project and involves no profit motive.)

Best,

M. Boyes and Tracey Cockrell