New York Entangled In Yarn Graffiti
The New York Times reports on “yarn bombing”, the softest, coziest form of urban vandalism. Leave your bike parked for too long and it could end up like the one at right, which has been chained for months in front of my friend’s store:
“Street art and graffiti are usually so male dominated,” Ms. Hemmons said. “Yarn bombing is more feminine. It’s like graffiti with grandma sweaters.”
Yarn bombing takes that most matronly craft (knitting) and that most maternal of gestures (wrapping something cold in a warm blanket) and transfers it to the concrete and steel wilds of the urban streetscape. Hydrants, lampposts, mailboxes, bicycles, cars — even objects as big as buses and bridges — have all been bombed in recent years, ever so softly and usually at night.
It is a global phenomenon, with yarn bombers taking their brightly colored fuzzy work to Europe, Asia and beyond. In Paris, a yarn culprit…
Yarn Storming: Robert Anton Wilson Style!
Ken Eakins of SittingNow.co.uk:
“One of our Australian listeners, Jo (from Cambria), was so inspired by Robert Anton Wilson and Bob Shea’s ‘Illuminatus Trilogy’, that he added a Fnordic twist to his yarn storming’”:
“I’ve attached photos of my most recent knit graffiti. I tag my knit bombs with bright yellow tags — one side has an eye on top of a pyramid with a red line running through it (Anti-Illuminati) and the other side has a quote from Schrodinger’s Cat or Illuminatus!”
Now, I have to admit, this is the first case of ‘Yarn Storming’ I’ve ever encountered, so I rushed to YewTube and unearthed this expanatory morsel:
