W2 Media Centre

Mandy and I will be giving a brief reading from the Yarn Bombing book at the W2 Writers Series tomorrow night:

Date: Wednesday February 24th
Location: W2 Culture + Media House 112 West Hastings Street across from the  Woodwards Building.

Doors open at 6:30
First Reader 710ish
Hosted by Sean Cranbury & Hal Wake

Program:

Opening Remarks: Sean Cranbury

Introducing Honoured Special Guest Michael Nichol Yahgulanaas who will showcase a video/interactive discussion about his work.

From there we will go to a streamlined line-up of 5-7 minute readings from our writers including two breaks.  Like this:

Rhonda Waterfall
Weldon Hunter
kc dyer

Break

Steven Galloway
Leilah Nadir
Alex Leslie
Caroline Adderson

Break

Leanne Prain & Mandy Moore aka The Yarn Bombers
McKinley M Hellenes
Timothy Taylor
Brad Cran

Here’s a video about the series: http://realvancouverwriters.com/2010/02/19/cool-video-about-w2-real-vancouver-writers-series/

Plus, there will be prizes, a cash bar, and  great art and photography on the walls.

In the meantime, we leave you with some random y-bomb links to round out 2009:

Yarn bombing puzzles and charms Christmas shoppers in Ecucha

Art Yarn‘s Yarn Forward project grows and grows.

The BYOB crew (Bombing Yarn Over Bend) offers instructions via Cyclocross magazine on how to cozy up your bike.

Tasmanian Renegade Craftivism

New crochet yarn bombing blog: Crochet the Day

Memory through knitting: the Elegant Spider remembers the victims of the Commemorates Victims of the École Polytechnique shootings in Montreal through yarn bombing. Watch the video here.

You have got to love husbands who leap from the car to take photos of yarn bombing! Via Twitchy Fingers.

Macleans Magazine pronounces Yarn Bombing part of the lingo that made 2009. We like to be topical.

We are looking forward to 2010 and lots of new knitting and crochet madness! Happy holidays dear yarn-bombers, stormers, and wool enthusiasts…here is wishing you a warm and wooly season, and fresh new things to cast on in the New Year.

Danielle of DeeDee’s Devotions, has been adorning trees with little creatures. She says:

I decided to do crocheted butterflies so I dug around online and found a simple pattern. I swear all I do is make butterflies these days. I think by the time I finish yarnbombing butterflies I’ll have made about 110. I put up about 50 today.

Props to Danielle’s dad who also has helped her install the butterflies. This picture makes me smile:

Dad and I also went to Central Community Park and pinned up a bunch of butteflies there. Dad was surprised by a lady who shouted “Is that Yarn graffiti?!” ha ha! He said it was so she hopped over the fence and grabbed one of the butteflies. Apparently she heard about yarn bombing on the CBC and by the way she jumped and waved at me (Dad told her I was the one who crocheted them all), she was pretty darned excited about it!

In other news,

KnittaPlease has posted a submission call for knit graffiti photographs for a new book that will be coming out next year (found via the Subversive Yarn Network)

There will be a Yarn Bombing Stitch and Bitch event at the Davie Street Book Warehouse this thursday evening. Come one, come all!

On twitter? Don’t forget to use #yarnbombing so that we can find your knit graffiti posts!

PS: This event is B.Y.O.H.A.N.Y (Bring your own hooks and needles and yarn).

The Ladies Fancywork Society, who kindly allowed us to interview them for the book and provided photographs of their beautiful crochet fancyworks, will be hosting a incognito book signing this coming Friday, September the 4th at Fancy Tiger Crafts in Denver, Colorado. If you are in the ‘hood, be sure to check it out! Mandy and I sure wish that we could be there!

For those closer to Vancouver, Canada, Mandy and I will be having the official Yarn Bombing book launch at Three Bags Full knit shop on Main Street on September 17th, beginning at 5:30 pm. There will be yarn bombing stories, tasty snacks, and lots of mayhem! We hope that you can join us. More details to come on the launch soon.

When Leanne and I went for a meeting with our publisher on Monday afternoon, we never suspected they’d surprise us with a stack of our books! We thought it was still being printed, and that we wouldn’t see it until September. We’re so thrilled with how it turned out, it’s absolutely beautiful!

It will soon be widely available, but you can buy a copy today from Arsenal – they’ll include one of the cute yarn bombing buttons Leanne designed.

Wow, isn’t this piece a beauty? The amazing KC Dyer sent it our way via this link: http://twitpic.com/80o7r. I’d love to see more work by these artists in Boston. A bit of internet sleuthing makes me think it is the South End Knitters whose work can be seen here:

http://chiccyclist.blogspot.com/2009/05/south-end-knitters-strike-again.html

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/01/11/close_knit_tag_team/
Note, the Boston Globe article says that the skull is out of glow-in-the-dark wool!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamarasphotos/sets/72157608123379561/

Last week I mentioned that we’d be giving away two tickets to the Vancouver showing of Handmade Nation, a craft documentary that will be in Vancouver on July 9th. Our publisher Arsenal Pulp Press will be posting a guest post by us on their blog tomorrow (July 6th) – be sure to check it in order to win! I’ve been waiting to see this documentary for over a year, and I just know that it is going to be amazing. Knitta even has an appearance.

Mandy and I had a great time at Fibres West. We met a lot of great people and came home with more wool than we arrived with. There were spinners, there were llamas, and there were a whole bunch of people who seemed really receptive to yarn graffiti. It was a fun day.

For the event, our publisher helped us make some snazzy mini buttons. We have three slogans:

‘Yarn Bomber’
‘I love subversive crochet’
‘I love guerrilla knitting’

I have about ten complete sets left which I’m giving away to the first ten people to comment and leave us a link to a piece of yarn graffiti!

Here is the cover and the publishing information:

Yarn Bombing
The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti
By Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain

Price: $19.95 USD
ISBN-13: 9781551522555
Available September, 2009. For more information contact sales@arsenalpulp.com

This is so exciting! We can’t wait to be able to share all of the patterns, photographs and interviews that we, and so many others, have been working on over the past year.