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!

Calgary
Congrats to the Calgary Art Bomber and the Happy Hookers for the successful installation of the traffic barrier project this week:

Image courtesy of The Calgary Art Bomber

Downtown Calgary should be looking a lot brighter!

British Columbia
Further west, yarn bombing has appeared in the Ski Resort of SunPeaks, BC:

yarn bombing tree

California
Down south (from my perspective in Vancouver), the ever intrepid Streetcolor has come up with some beautiful wrapped poles:

Photos courtesy of Streetcolor.

Each of these knit pieces are 30 feet long!

Streetcolor has been decorating museum sites lately – and has been writing some very interesting blog posts. If you haven’t had a chance to visit her blog lately, I would recommend it. And, if you are new to yarn bombing, do not miss her advice for novice yarn bombers.

Germany
Further afield, there has been more yarn bombing in Berlin! This video, sent to me by Miraché, makes me extremely happy: Yarn Bombing in Berlin

She says: ‘A group of Guerilla Knitters which I am part of have recently (31 January to be precise) stormed the U1 in Berlin disguised with knitted beards and armed with knitted cozies, to beautify and soften the harsh interior of the everyday world of commuters. After 3 months of preparation with my Stitch N Bitch group, it took us just an hour to install, and the carriage stayed in circulation until around 15:00, when the BVG security unfortunately cut it all to pieces. Despite making those few employees miserable by giving them extra work, I think we cheered up a fair amount of weary travellers on a gloomy January day!’

I agree – I love the smile on the bewildered passenger’s face in the first minute of the video. See more photos of the installation here.

Morocco
Carole has written to tell me that she has completed her first yarn bombing – in Morocco! This little tag was placed on a telephone in the tiny town of Tiznit. It’s the first time that Carole has knitted in 20 years – I think that the tag is a good return to the knit. Congrats Carole!

Chile
While the earthquake in Japan has been on the forefront of my mind lately as the country has a special kinship with the area of Canada that I live in – Marina has reminded me that Chile is also recovering from the effects of their own natural disaster. In late February, she decorated a building in Santiago which had been torn apart by an 8.8 earthquake to be a sign of hope for renewal and to bring attention to an apartment that was once a home to many people: http://www.revesderecho.com/2011/02/28/yarnbombing-27f/

Moscow
From warm to cold, there has also been some winter yarn bombing in Moscow. This photo was sent in by Наталья Кириллова:

I can’t read Russian, but from what I can tell from their blog – they got up to some woolly madness: http://lunteg.livejournal.com/132994.html Anyone know this statue? It’s time to break out the Google Translate.

Whew – that’s not all, but it is all I’m going to put in this post. Next time – an interview with two artist working with fibre in Seattle!

Looking to do some yarn bombing next weekend? If you are close to Daytona Beach, Florida, there will be a community event for fiber enthusiasts:

Saturday, April 9 10 to 3 pm
Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.

Yarn Bombing by local guerrilla girls – bring your needles and yarn, bring your friends, and join in the fun. Also Sister City poets are participating with a tug ‘o war poetry contest and groups of knitters are coming in from around the area. It’s a free art installation gig! Laughter provided free of charge.

While we’ve been having so much fun working with Historic Joy Kogawa House and putting together their knitted cherry tree, my in-box has been filling up with worthwhile yarn bombing causes. While I promise to post more cherry blossom photos soon, today’s post is dedicated to other projects that you may want to consider getting involved with.

Calling knitters in East Vancouver
I received an email from Craig who is calling guerilla knitters to help save some historic East Vancouver elm trees. He’s hoping to find some interested crafters who would be willing to yarn bomb the trees. He says:

When signs went up along East Sixth Avenue notifying residents of imminent tree removal, the overwhelming sentiment in the area suddenly became akin to a “Nightmare on Elm Street”. Thirty magnificent Siberian Elms, which for over 70 years have defined the character of this East Vancouver neighbourhood, are slated to be fallen. In fact, historic street trees such as these are recognized by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation as one of the city’s top 10 endangered sites. With little consultation by the City to date, residents are calling on the public for support.

Guerilla knitters, you can get involved! Although a second arborist consultation to determine the level of safety and disease of the trees is still impending, meaning the tree trunks and branches cannot be covered entirely, knitters can create locks and chains to adorn the trees, symbolizing that they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

The trees in question are between the 1500 and 2200 block of East Sixth Avenue, between Grandview Highway and Nanaimo. Of the roughly 150 trees present, the 30 speculated for removal are mostly found between Commercial and Victoria drives.

For more information about the cause, visit: http://saveourelms.wordpress.com or http://www.facebook.com/saveourelms

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.

Andrew, a local yarn bomber here in Vancouver, BC, contacted us with a few picture of his recent bright orange tags!

I’ve been crocheting for about 5 years now and sewing for the past year. I totally support the arts and am going to be yarn bombing all over Vancouver, so hopefully you can spot some of my bombs, mainly going to be downtown and on public transit. I’m going to only be rocking a hot orange yarn for my signature to make them stand out, and for orange being my favourite color, ha ha. Just on the way downtown to the library today I did 3 bombs, 2 mini ones on the bus and Skytrain, and I’m in the works on covering a bench arm rest at the library. Here are some shots!!

We appreciate his daring -he’s managed to tag public transit here several times, which is no small feat, as it is heavily patrolled during hockey season. And his work has been spotted all over the Vancouver Transit System – we’ve been getting many reports of sightings.

Andrew was kind enough to take some time out from tagging to answer some questions for us. Some details have been changed to protect his identity:

Tell us about yourself. What’s your name (or code name)? Where do you live in? How old are you? What’s your day job?

Hello all you yarn-bombers out there. My name’s Andrew and I am from Vancouver, Canada. I’m 20 and a full-time business student. I like to think of my employment as crocheting
and sewing. I like to call it a little side project, but I’m in the works of starting up a custom skimboard bag company since all I do, breath, and dream about is skimboarding. I also sell toques* and have
been crocheting for 5 years.

How did you get into textile graffiti?

Funny enough, a friend showed me some pictures of knit/crochet graffiti a while back and didn’t think much of it. After doing a custom crochet project with Complex (graffiti associated) , which was dubbed “The Fray Project”, he told me yarn-bombing was happening right here in Vancouver. I couldn’t believe it and had to get in on the action. I just started yarn-bombing, doing little tags on transit, and covering an arm on a bench at our DT public library, which is still there haha. I mainly do it alone since I don’t know any other yarn-bombers, and am usually on the go.

I’m trying to get a few friends together and do some big missions and get creative, but so far it’s been all talk and no walk.

Where do you create your tags?

I do my tags on the spot in broad daylight, full view for bystanders to see. Typically they are small, going as fast as I can for 15mins on a bus or skytrain with a 7mm hook around a pole isn’t that easy I found out. I plan to only use red-heart orange yarn, as my signature color, since I’m a red-head. I plan on doing some big pieces soon, so watch out for those orange Yarn-Bombs!

I scope out my spot, making sure no authority is present, or anyone who I think would intervene and get to it. I crochet only. I plan on tagging a lot of skytrain and bus poles, just to jazz them up and bring some life to their cold hard surfaces.

I tag whenever I feel the need to crochet or whenever I feel like doing it, lately school has been running my life so I try to do it once in a while.

How do you get your inspiration for tags?

I love seeing what other people do on this blog. I would even be more stoked if I saw some yarn-bomb’s in my city.

What is your craziest yarn graffiti fantasy?

To yarn-bomb a cop’s gun handle while it’s right in its holster!

Does your family know you do this? Do your co-workers know?

Yes, I’ve informed them and my mom think’s its rad. I don’t have any co-workers but I’m sure they would want in no doubt.

What do you say when people ask you what you are knitting?

First of all, I tell them it’s crocheting, big difference. Secondly, I tell them I’m making art. If they continue talking, I do the head nod until they stop since they usually take away time from my precious yarn-bombing.

Have you ever been caught in the act yarn-bombing? What did you do?

Not yet. But if I was, I’d run I think….

Do you document your work? Do you photograph it or keep a blog?

I always try to take photos of all my yarn-bombs. I just usually upload them to Facebook to my “sweatshop” album where I do all my craft. Keep up the yarn-bombing everyone, especially all you Vancourites!

Thanks Andrew – for answering our questions. We’ll be keeping an eye out for your bright orange tags as we move around the city!

*If you are interested in sporting some of Andrew’s hand crocheted work; he sells his toques at Complex, El Kartel, and
Headquarter in Downtown Vancouver.

Enough about us. Rebecca sent us this wonderful wrapped post from Fremantle, Australia.

Rebecca reports: Hulbert Street in Fremantle, Western Australia about two weeks ago. Yarnbombing has been going off here in Perth, I’ve been seeing more and more! A local yarnbomber (Captain Plaknit) has also been asked by the local council to yarnbomb and entire street for a festival at the end of this year – I’ll bet he’s busy.

Thanks to Rebecca for taking the time to send this – and kudos to Captain Plaknit – his ‘yarn blooms‘ are impressive! I’d love to see more yarn bombers experiment with wooly typography like the Captain.

This wooly meter only lasted for a day, so I’m glad that he managed to capture it! I wonder if it was done by Janna?

There’s lots of yarn bombing happening on the Western half of Canada. There have been a series of yarn bombing events in Regina, and the Calgary ArtBomber is adding to the Calgary landscape. A yarn bomb that is embroidered with the words ‘yarn bomb’ makes me giggle.

The weather is getting cooler – bring out those needles and hooks!

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.

(Mitten photo courtesy of Lady Ducayne) Machine knit Vancouver 2010 mittens are worn by lots of folks, including dinosaurs (why is this image not licensed under Creative Commons? I need it).

Oh yeah, did we mention that we’re living in the middle of an Olympic city? In addition to some knitting controversy, the Olympics have brought many transportation changes – Vancouver has a new underground train, we have a temporary street car, and many streets have been shut down to accommodate pedestrians only. One of the strangest additions to these foot-friendly streets are the pedicabs that seem to have popped up overnight. The crowds are so thick, I honestly can’t see how anyone can cycle through them. Just as one would expect of a city filled with Olympic sponsors, our pedicabs are adorned with corporate advertisements and not much else.

Our transportation needs some yarn. Take a look at what Carol Hummel has been decorating in Nepal:

She says:

When the rickshaw driver walked up and saw me “bombing” his rickshaw, he stood there as if it was like any other normal event of the day… when I finished, he stood back, looked it over, approved it and then rode away on his bicycle rickshaw… As he pedaled away the yarn blended into the colorful surroundings as if it was just another patch of the Nepali fabric of (very colorful) life… And then another bicycle rickshaw pulled up and gestured me to do his rickshaw, too!

Beautiful. Vancouver needs to bring out the hand-knitting (and crocheting). Who is with me?

Read more of Carol’s adventures here.

Robyn Love Exhibition

And speaking of transport, Robyn Love who created the Knitted Mile which is in our Yarn Bombing book will having a show of the knitted mile in Brooklyn: