Knit but not for naught

First, I noticed seven knitted and crocheted squares against the inside of the eastern vertical railings of the Mass Ave bridge, each of a different color(s) and with a letter of another color in the middle: T, O, T, A, L, L, Y.

Huh? I'm usually pressed for time when I cross the bridge, so I didn't stop running long to look closely, but it seemed the work of a group I'd heard of called Guerrilla Knitters, mostly young, mostly women. I'd seen their work elsewhere, sleeves around trunks and branches of trees for instance, and, in photographs, on statues.

A few steps on, and the horizontal railing carried more handwork. Orange twine, blue capes, ponchos and potholders, the horizontal metal handrail sleeved with shawls of solid red, lavender, green, and an antler-like branch laced with yellow ribbon. Worked into one piece, the name of the group that had put all this up: The Joining Project. In another Boston Strong, and in another Close-knit Boston. One piece had the name of the founder of the group.

I imagine a crack team of picked knitters in dark clothes, smudged faces, creeping out on the bridge in the dead of night, the product of weeks of work divided between them. Whispered: This over here, that there. Freeze;  faces to the river till the car goes by. Okay, let's get a move on, girls, and get out of here.

What was joined or to be joined? The installation seemed a bit motley. But it was there for early passersby to ponder: what moved these young women to engage in radical domestication of the steel bridge?  Is the message the potential (metaphoric) of marriage between handwork and hardware. Maybe they were just also having a good laugh. The crocheted squares stretched over the railings seemed like porous sails propelling the bridge downstream to the the city.

More than a joke, less than a manifesto, it was totally (as in truly, not just completely) intriguing to encounter this manifestation of the wide-spread passionate imagination that continually nucleates, swells, ascends, and makes this living city what it is.