About Us 2012

Collaborative Yarnbomb at The Oakland Museum , streetcolor

Why am I so fascinated by yarnbombing ?

I know how it started – I was in a bookstore in Mendocino , Ca and I pulled out the book ” Yarnbombing ” by Leanne Priann and Mandy Moore . I saw knitting outside on the street for the first time and I was intensely surprised and inspired and I thought  ” This is so beautiful and I want to do it ! ”

I went home to Berkeley Ca and put up a small yellow striped yarnbomb across the street from my house and I fell in love with it . When I get very interested in something I try to get every one to do it , so I lured a young friend into yarnbombing with me and we began to cover our city with knitting . I named my friend ” The Russian ” and took the name ” Streetcolor ” . We spun all our own yarn and pretty much yarnbombed full time . I started writing this blog to document our work and began to use Facebook and Tweet .

We received a lot of unexpected media attention . This was both very exciting , certainly unprecedented in my life and also very frustrating . It was frustrating because almost all of the newspaper and magazine articles said the same thing and it was a silly joke ” Graffiti Grannies Knit And Run !

And then they would quote a little something and ask me if I had been arrested .

I felt like there was more to yarnbombing then just a shallow trend so I began to do some research . I found that yarnbombing was shockingly pervasive – it was being done all over the U. S , tremendous amounts in Europe especially England , The Netherlands , Denmark , Iceland , Spain  and Finland  , it was all over Australia , New Zealand , the city of Buenos Aires , Canada , Russia  and a little in Japan and Bolivia .

yarnbomb by File Tag Vile in Cahoors , France June 2012

And the range of purpose !  Yarnbombing was being done by individuals for fun , by groups for museum gardens ,bookstore openings , youth groups yarnbombing entire parks , University political classes were covering statues and mail boxes , senior centers yarnbombing freeway over passes , art festivals taken over by knitting , political marches were accompanied by yarnbombing – clearly something is going on – something more than a silly joke .

yarnbomb in Poland by Babuktarium May 2011

So I decided I wanted to document all this and contemplate what it all means .

I do believe that if you take any topic , anything at all , and explore it very deeply with curiosity , experimentation, interest and love it will tell you secrets of life .

So now in Nov 2012 I am still yarnbombing myself , I am planning some Christmas blitzing in San Francisco , but I am increasingly using this blog to write about yarnbombing all over the globe and to meditate on knitting , crocheting , street art , the power creativity has to carry us along in our lives and the importance of steady , constant small pleasures.