Yarn Bombing, or dressing the city in wool

Some days ago I posted on Facebook the photos of a car and of some trees “attacked” by Yarn Bombing. Today I’m going to tell you a bit about this movement.

Also known as yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, urban knitting or graffiti knitting, is a street art that uses colourful knitted or crocheted creations in their displays. It is said that it came out from the necessity of finding a way out for all those unfinished projects and leftovers that all the crocheters and knitters have.

The process and the result are very funny, both for people making the yarn installations and for the people seeing the process of setting them into place. Those people sewing in the street, sometimes at ungodly hours (like when Teje la araña put the bollards in Madrid) are not crazy.

             

Bollards in Madrid 2015

The first person to do this is said to be Magda Sayeg, in Houston in 2005. She covered the door handle of her boutique with a custom-made cozy and there it began…

Knit theCity is the first community we have a register of. They act in London from February 2009. From then, they have participate in a huge number of yarn installations.

       

Knit the City

 

The installations can range from covering the urban furniture with wool, to dressing the sculptures. Trees and lampposts are not safe from this attacks neither.

Embroidering using a chain-link fence is another option we can find, like the work of LondonKaye. I will tell you more about her another day.

   

London Kaye

 

Lately we can also find this phenomenon in Spain. Apart from Teje la araña, in Madrid we can also find Lana Connection. In Zaragoza we have Urban Knitting, as well as in many other cities like Valencia, Avilés, Bilbao, Castellón…

If you are interested in this movement and you have already seen wool decorated monuments in you city, look for those wool enthusiasts and you will easily find them.

        

Zaragoza old town

 

What do you think? Will it turn into a new street art like graffiti?