This morning Mandy and I met up with other fellow knitters to cozy up a forgotten statue on Vancouver’s seawall. Here are some pics:

Thanks to Olga, Kat, Valerie, April, Phillip, Mandy, Pippa, Peggy, Cynara, Linda, Judie, Annie, Megan, Zak, and everyone else who helped today and with knitting and crocheting squares.

More posts to come as soon as my computer problems are sorted!

If you live in the Vancouver area, the tree will be decorated until the first of March. It is located in the back alley of Historic Joy Kogawa House at 1450 West 64th Avenue.

Photos by Jeff Christenson.

A comprehensive set of photos of the day can be seen through photographer Lydia Nagai’s flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lydianagai/sets/72157626101621321

I have also written a guest post for Arsenal Pulp Press about the day which should be posted on their blog soon, and April (April’s Tender Nest) and Monica (
Monica Miller) who attended the event, have both written blog posts about their experience helping us decorate the tree.

Thanks again to everyone who participated – whether it be by decorating or sending in their blossoms. It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring day.

And of course, while our heads have been involved in all things cherry blossom, the world of knit graffiti never sleeps. My in-box is so chock full of good stuff that I’m having a hard time keeping up. If you’ve sent me an email, and I haven’t gotten back to you, I promise another project round-up very soon.

In the meantime, there have been a ton of wonderful large-scale projects that you need to check out immediately, including:

Magda Sayeg’s Stunning 99 Trees in Austin.

Juliana’s charming yarn bombed pot holes in Paris.

And, the yarn bombing of the Blue Line in Philly.

Delighted.

Photograph by Jeff Christenson

Thanks to everyone, near and far, who helped to make today’s yarn bombing at Historic Joy Kogawa House a success. More photos of the day coming soon!

Thanks to everyone who came out last weekend to make cherry blossoms for the Historic Joy Kogawa House Yarn Bombing. We had a great turnout of enthusiastic crafty-types and Historic Joy Kogawa House has been receiving lovely pink blossoms in the mail. We can’t wait to sew them all together and onto the tree!

Here are a few photos last Sunday’s event:

A plethora of crocheted cherry blossoms from North Vancouver!

Mandy gives a knitting lesson.

I talked about the global movement of yarn bombing and showed some of my favorite photos of knit graffiti.

Everybody knitted with pink yarn!

Poet and novelist Joy Kogawa was present too,  if only in cut-out format.

After a day of knitting, we measure the beloved cherry tree in preparation for the yarn bombing on March 6th.

If you are local and couldn’t make it out last Sunday – please consider joining us in making cherry blossoms on Saturday, February 5th between 2-3:30. If you don’t live in the Vancouver area, you can still contribute by mailing in blossoms to Historic Kogawa House. We will take blossoms of any style and any type of yarn – as long as they are pink!

(A special thanks to photographer Jeff Christenson for capturing the afternoon.)

Knit Graffiti Round-up

My mailbox has been heavy with new yarn bombing feats – while we have much to post in the way of interviews and new yarn bombers trying their odds at sneakiness, here are a few noteworthy links of late:

You can now read Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti in German! The book has been translated by Droemer Knaur.

We’ve been giddy about Olek’s winter yarn bombing of the great brass bull on Wall Street in NYC and we hope you are too. While the knitting only lasted one night, videos are forever. If you haven’t seen this video, it is a must watch.

Speaking of large mammels: a yarn-bombed Hippo in Berlin (via the industrious KnitHacker)

More cozy trees in Brooklyn.

Lovely video of Dot Vile yarnbombing in Philly.

Genny’s birthday is coming up, and rather than pub crawling, she is inviting her friends to yarn ‘crawl’ aka bomb. Nice!

80 year old woman may or may not know that she is yarn bombing. What do you think?

Also via KnitHacker, I am absolutely charmed by this variation of the Chelsea Gunn’s monster foot pattern from our Yarn Bombing book: http://knithacker.com/2011/01/24/dragon-foot-yarn-bomb-spotted-in-saarbrucken/. It is the cutest monstrosity that I have ever seen.

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.