Yarn bombing unravels world wide

Out for a neighborhood stroll, a yarn covered stop sign made me halt in my tracks and launched me into the secretive and rebellious world of “yarn bombing.” Most yarn projects in my life have sadly been ill-fitting Christmas sweaters from Grandma or potholder craft projects. This was another thing altogether - a startling wonder.

Turns out this expressive and crafty form of street art is erupting around the world. Artists have been transforming mundane public objects – buses, stairs, poles, statues, etc. to the delight of uban dwellers, if not always city officials. The surprising public art pieces have caught attention as a tank blanket in Copenhagen, Denmark; pothole coasters in Paris, France; a statue brandishing a gun cozy in Bali, Indonesia; a full sized bus in Mexico City and a fire truck cherry picker was once employed to fix knit cherry blossoms on a tree in Vancouver, Canada.

Most of those projects were created by Magda Sayeg, known as the “mother of yarn bombing.” Her 2005 piece “Knitta Please” brought her to the world’s attention and led to commissions from municipal groups and companies around the globe. Once a mother on welfare, she knit a cover for a shop door knob. Customers were charmed and that inspiration has turned corporate.

Magda now works with a team of knitters in her home town of Austin, Texas. The projects bloom from her computer first as Photoshop files. Vintage, knit pieces are collected, embellished and wound together in her local workshop. Installations take another team of volunteers. Magda claims that she’s not very good at knitting herself, but motivated, “to encourage others to create and participate.” And so they have.

Turns out that my yarn bomb stop sign has caused a civic rumpus locally when an artist, known simply as Bryan, took his hobby public. He decided to beautify local stop signs and covered nearly 100 before things started unraveling. San Diego City official Bill Harris contacted Bryan, through his website and admonished him to stop turning signs into trees. In a city deluged with an underfunded backlog of infrastructure tasks from potholes, dangerously cracked sidewalks to retrofitting overpasses, many of Bryan’s stop sign trees are happily still sprouting throughout San Diego neighborhoods.

Photo courtesy of author.