VANCOUVER — Vancouver’s urban landscape has become the target of a worldwide craze that is taking knitting and crocheting out of granny’s kitchen and onto the street in the stitching version of graffiti.
From doorknob cosies to knitted tree wraps, the yarn graffiti is showing up in all sorts of public spaces — and in a soon-to-be-released book by Vancouver yarn bombers Leanne Prain and Mandy Moore.
Yarn bombers leave tags, just as their spray-painting counterparts do, but they are far easier to remove. And the tags are captured in photos and postings online.
“I think it caught the imagination of a lot of knitters and crocheters to see graffiti done with textiles,” said Prain, who is co-authoring the book Yarn Bombing: the Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti and blogs about her pastime at www.yarnbombing.com.
In the book, the authors interview yarn bombers around the world, from the Netherlands to Texas, home of Knitta, a group that launched the practice back in 2005 with a knitted doorknob cosy. It describes itself as “guerrilla knitters.”
“Most of my tags have been on poles,” said Prain. The book will include patterns for yarn bombing, included knitted monster feet to put on sandwich boards and knitted runners for the yarn version of sneaker graffiti to go over wires.
There are also knitted tulips and a knitted mushroom to sneak into someone’s flower bed or lawn.
The yarn bombers even have their own Inspector Clouseau-like outfits for their clandestine work, from pink balaclavas to sweaters with changeable collars and sleeves that come off.
“If they are knitters they want to know what kind of wool we are using,” said Prain. “Some people just stop and stare quizzically.”
The book, published by Arsenal Pulp Press, is scheduled for release in September.
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