Parking meters along the busiest strip of Madison Avenue this holiday season will be laced with vibrant sweaters, hand-knitted in this very neighborhood.

It’s an art that has been around for hundreds of years, knitting. And knitters in the Upper Madison Improvement Group have changed up their mission of making sweaters for trees on upper Madison Avenue, just two years ago. This year, Virginia Hammer, president of The Pine Hills Neighborhood Association is working on a new project, knitting sweaters for parking meters.

Switching from trees to parking meters was an easy decision, said Hammer. “We didn’t want to repeat the tree project and wanted something a little less time consuming, so the parking meters were perfect.”

Those meters are among the 1,988 city-wide, which bring in between $2.2 and $2.5 million in revenue annually, according Sean Palladino of the Albany Parking Authority.

For Hammer and her husband, John, the meters presented an opportunity and they spent much of their 2014 winter knitting. In fact, they spun a total of 80 yards – almost the length of a football field. The artistic couple wants this project to mean much more than just a sweater.

“I want people to say what a neat thing, and what a neat neighborhood this is, and look at those old people over there doing something funky,” John Hammer said, laughing.

The retired professor from Russell Sage College, began knitting when he was a little boy in Berlin, Germany. “It wasn’t an uncommon thing,” said Hammer, “most kids learned how to knit whether you were a boy or a girl.”

The idea was sparked for the couple just before they walked into a museum in Rockport, Maine. Trees outside the museum were draped with hand knitted sweaters in assorted colors. The idea for this year’s parking meter sweaters came from a book in the Albany Public Library titled Yarn Bombing.

“When I first saw the sweaters I thought to myself how nice they make this part of Albany look,” said Mayah Bright an Albany High Senior. “The sweaters are different, you don’t see them anywhere else except for this great community.”

Bright’s classmate, Liberty Seifert, weighed in too: “They’re really cute. It reminds me of the holiday season, so it’s really nice to walk down here and see all the sweaters on the parking meters.”

The goal for neighborhood advocates is to create a sense of unity throughout the Pine Hills, and shine a light on upper Madison Avenue as a unique place for people to visit.

“The neighborhood is home to more than 50 different businesses, shopping, live entertainment and a library,” said Virginia. “As a group we want to try and beautify, promote and celebrate upper Madison as city living at its best.” -30-