Close-knit: Student uses yarn for art in storefront

Kristin Roach, 25, knits in the storefront of The Yarn Exchange on East Lincoln Highway in DeKalb on Monday afternoon. Monday was the first day in a month of performance art in which Roach will sit near the store window and knit items such as an afghan and backgammon board to literally and figuratively tie up loose strings before she graduates from Northern Illinois University in May. “It invites viewers to come into the yarn shop,” she said. “We’ll show people how to knit.” ERIC SUMBERG | esumberg@daily-chronicle.com

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As she has many times before, 25-year-old Northern Illinois University senior Kristin Roach sat quietly knitting. But this time she was on display. Monday marked the first day of nearly one month of Roach's planned live-performance art piece. She will tie up the loose strings of her time in DeKalb by knitting and crocheting in the storefront window of The Yarn Exchange at 134 E. Lincoln Highway. “I decided I wanted to do an installation at The Yarn Exchange because I wanted it to be site-specific,” said Roach, who will graduate in May with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. “Plus, our front window display has always been a little lacking.” Roach hails from Moline and moved to DeKalb in the summer of 2005 to pursue painting. She began knitting in the fall of that year and soon was coming to the Yarn Geeks, a gathering of local yarn enthusiasts who meet on Fridays at The Yarn Exchange. “They taught me a lot about knitting,” Roach said. “From that I started writing my own patterns and really took to it. It was kind of uncanny.” In January 2006, after an unsuccessful day of job hunting, Roach visited the store to buy yarn to help relieve her stress. Shop owner Sandi Gavin offered her a job on the spot, and she has been at work at the yarn shop and neighboring Encore Clothing ever since. As a knitter who is an artist, Roach has taken a shine to creating patterns. She will likely have a pattern published in a craft magazine this fall and is a guest designer in an upcoming pattern book. “I wanted to pay tribute to crafts and women,” Roach said of why she decided to create performance art out of her hobby and job. “I wanted to pay tribute to craft within an art context.” At about 1 p.m. Monday, she set up shop in the store, which was closed. Using a frame in the store window, she first hung up her unfinished projects, which included an afghan, two sweaters, a tank top, a lace scarf, a backgammon board game and bag, a head wrap and a shawl. Underneath each project was a pile of yarn, some of it expensive and some bought from a thrift store years ago, waiting to be used. “It's kind of like a symbolic tying up of loose ends before I leave DeKalb,” Roach said as she knit a yellow scarf decorated with the Greek letters of her boyfriend's fraternity. “In theory I'll try to work through most of them. In theory.” Roach plans on sitting in the shop window from 1-4 p.m. Monday through Thursday until May 1. The plan already has hit a couple of snags: Roach has been asked to teach spinning yarn for a lesson on medieval times at the DeKalb School District's Brooks Elementary School on Wednesday and has to fill in at Encore Clothing for a few hours on Thursday. But the artist remains optimistic about her performances. “I'm thinking during shop hours I'll invite people to come up and knit,” she said. “It'll do what it's going to do,” she added. “Art is kind of a strange beast like that.”