I have this funny sort of life where I am so busy yarnbombing that I seem to have no time to write about yarnbombing . Or really do anything else for that matter. We have been installing at The Oakland Museum Of California for three weeks and I want to tell you every detail about that – but I must take a pause in my glacial telling of that story to tell you of today’s thrilling adventure. We yarnbombed the station manager’s office on live TV on CBS ” Good Day Sacramento “.
I was sitting at home on Wednesday this week savoring that we had finally installed the tree , the garland and the bench at The Oakland Museum and that my hectic life of yarnbombing was finally going to slow down . No more frantic spinning and hounding my friends to knit ! I calmly checked my e-mails and there was a request to yarnbomb on live TV for ‘Good Day Sacramento ” Yarnbombing on live TV ! That sounded like something I’d like so I called Ashley and asked her when would she like this entire office to be yarnbomberd .
This Sunday . Nov. 13 . In 4 days .
huh.
“Well Ashley I said , knitting is a slow activity . We had 5 people knitting for 8 weeks to yarnbomb The Oakland Museum . Could we have a little more time ? ”
“Well no ”
I wanted to do this so I said ” Yes -and could I bring a ukelele player and The Russian ? ”
Yes that was great -it was now Thursday afternoon so I began thinking furiously -how to do this office and make it well bombed and beautiful.
I – cord .
I had been playing with knitting I- cord from my handspun and had used it to make a tree sash and a knitted flower garland . I have a tiny pink plastic knitting machine that you can hand crank and it knits i-cord . It is very time consuming but I like that and the knitted cord is cushy and big. I thought in 3 days I could make enough i-cord to wrap the table and chairs in this office . I began cranking.
I don’t know what the term i – cord means .
So I cranked for 12 hours on Friday and it was not enough so I asked my friends to come and turn the crank and it still wasn’t enough so I bought 3 more cranks and it still wasn’t enough and I was giving myself a headache so I decided it was enough.
So this morning we drove over and picked up The Russian and drove up to Sacramento at 6 in the morning and The Russian knit i – cord as we drove . I wasn’t at all nervous about being on TV. ” Good Day Sacramento ” is very local and has lots of artists on it . I was mostly very eager to see how the wrapping would look. I like having ideas in my mind and then having the gamble of seeing if they will look good. The drive was beautiful , the moon was up , the rice fields were green and the trees were bright red . There were nets of small black birds spinning .
We got to CBS right at 7.30 and were greeted and sent to the green room . I tried not to eat the soap samples. After a few minutes we were taken to the bosses office . To my surprise the boss was still in his office. I contemplated yarnbombing him.
He didn’t seem like he wanted to be yarnbombed so we began yarnbombing the furniture . The boss left . It was tricky wrapping the i- cord around the curved shapes of the chairs . The Russian was wrapping beautifully and with total confidence. She is in art school that’s why . Josh began playing the ukelele .
The camera man arrived . He really like the ukelele playing . He began coaching Josh . I hoped that he would come to like yarnbombing. The anchor man came in and asked me lots of great questions . I started to relax. Then I realized we were not on the air. Then we went on the air and were very enthusiastic.
They set up a time lapse camera and went off to film the turkey weight lifting . We wrapped and wrapped.
We wrapped 3 chairs . I wrapped 2 handles . Josh played Christmas Carols . I began to sweat profusely . I’m not supposed to sweat . I began tearing off clothes and microphones. We started wrapping the table . We were down to the last little ball of i – cord.
‘Do you want to end with white ? ” The Russian asked .
‘Don’t you have a little more cord ? ” I asked . And yes she had cranked a tiny bit more in the car . We finished and it looked very cool. I was very hot .
The anchor came back in and we finished up. They took our microphones. I started taking pictures . Josh left . The stop motion camera kept filming . I felt exhilarated .
But no ! The anchorman is back and they are giving me back my microphone and we are talking about this blog and The Oakland Museum yarnbombing . And Josh comes flying into third base and finishes the broadcast with a few bright ukelele chords.
As we packed up Josh said ” I learned an important lesson about being on live TV today ”
“What’s that ? ”
‘Never leave while the camera is still running ”
You can see us yarnbombing very fast here. CBS Sacramento .
Streetcolor 