These Drunken Knitwits made the Fitler Square animal statues cozy for the holidays

Four-year-old Maura Keys was on a walk with her dad, Ben Keys, to Fitler Square Park one Sunday in early December. They were going, as they often do, to visit some of Maura’s favorite friends, the park’s animal statues — the bear, the ram, the little dog, and those three turtles.

When they got to the park, Maura’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then she squealed with delight.

The animals were all wearing sweaters!

“She immediately ran over to them as she usually does to say hello, but with even more excitement and awe,” said Keys. “It really brought joy.”

Those sweatered statues have been bringing joy to a lot of people this December.

All this delight is the handiwork of the Philadelphia Drunken Knitwits, a crew of city knitters and crocheters who came up with the whimsical idea and carried it out with the blessing of the Friends of Fitler Square Park.

The Knitwits pitched it to the park folks back in October.

“We thought it was a fantastic idea,” said Robin Parke, board president of the Friends of Fitler Square Park. “Our park is a focal point of the neighborhood. It’s a little oasis in the middle of a big city,” she said. “And the statues are beloved by grown-ups and kids alike.”

So the knitting group, several of whose members live in the vicinity of Fitler Square, got to work. They weren’t strangers to large projects. Their first public yarn bombing was a 500-piece installation that was part of a juried exhibition at the Cherry Street Pier last summer.

The Philadelphia Drunken Knitwits are part of an international fellowship of other Drunken Knitwits groups that have formed over the last several years, sharing a love of woolcraft and somewhat tipsy good times. But not too tipsy.

“Rarely does anyone get drunk because it’s very hard to knit when you’re intoxicated,” said Allison Covey, Philly Drunken Knitwits founder and head Knitwit. She was a member of the original Drunken Knitwits group in Oxford, England, when she lived there. The city’s pub culture inspired the group’s name.

Now, she said, there are Drunken Knitwits chapters elsewhere in the United States, Australia, and European.

“Dublin is our sister chapter,” said Covey, 46, who is a Villanova University ethics professor when not knitting.

The Philly group, which formed in 2017, meets every Wednesday, more likely in restaurants than bars, although there has been the occasional pop-up beer garden.

And on those fall Wednesdays, after they got the go-ahead from the Fitler Square folks, a core group of about 10 members (the group has many more members) set out to create some holiday magic.

It was a lot more involved than a non-knitter might guess. Since there are no patterns for statues, they had to be designers and planners as well as knitters.

“We had a visit where we did all the measurements because you can’t use a preexisting pattern. You have to create a pattern for the statue,” Covey said. “And then the knitting takes quite some time.”

The sweater for the bear alone took 35 hours to create, she estimated.

The sweaters are not all the same. Sweaters for the turtles and the dog were crocheted. The bear’s sweater was knit with a crotchet trim, and the ram’s sweater was also knit.

They added little details as well. The little figures in the designs on the sweaters are the animals themselves.

Finally, after about six weeks and 10 skeins of yarn, the sweaters were done. They were installed, i.e. the animals were dressed, on Dec. 7.

It won hearts right away.

“We were in the park decorating the fountain for the holidays, and I immediately saw people get out their phones and start snapping,” said Parke, who is also director of children’s programming for Christ Church Philadelphia.

“Now every time I’m in the park, which is quite often, there are people taking photos,” she said. ”So I think they’re very happy with it.”

For many, the mystery is the magic. “Who did this?” they ask, said Parke.

The comments on the friends of the park’s Facebook page have been quite positive.

In fact, Covey said the Knitwits have gotten a request from folks at Rittenhouse Square to do something for their statues. Probably next year, she said. And there have also been some stirrings from Society Hill for the statues at Three Bears Park.

Covey said the sweaters are expected to remain in place through the holidays, until after the end of Hanukkah.

Until then, local residents and random winter strollers will continue to pass by, then see and stop. And like Maura Keys, they, too, may be filled with wonder.

“I just thought it was such a delight,” said her father, 46, and a Penn real estate professor. “It’s such a clever idea. And, you know, it’s just one more way to celebrate the holiday season.”

This story has been updated to correct the names in photo captions of Britt Iascone and Taylor Kroma-Wiley.