Under the cover of darkness, they move quickly and covertly around the city. Donning hoodies and other stealthy garb, they pass from lamppost to park bench to chain-link fence, tagging as they go. In the morning, neighbourhoods awaken to fresh graffiti in their parks and around their storefronts.
But if you catch them in the act, you won’t hear the rattle of a spray paint can. Instead, it’s the clicking of knitting needles that gives these street artists away.
That’s right, an activity once relegated to your grandmother’s rocking chair has moved onto the streets. “Yarn bombing” has grown into a global movement of woolly intervention in the urban landscape, in which self-proclaimed “craftivisits” graffiti everything from parking meters to bridges with knitted legwarmers and crocheted cozies.
From Sydney to Stockholm, Paris to St. Petersburg, nowhere is safe from these crafty crews who leave their knit graffiti mark on everything from the Great Wall of China to the Golden Gate Bridge.
According to Leanne Prain, a Vancouver-based author and designer, the idea behind yarn bombing is simple: “It’s street art that’s made with yarn.”
Prain, who blogs about the renegade art form at yarnbombing.com, recently co-authored a book on the subject with fellow knitter Mandy Moore. Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti, published in 2009 by Arsenal Pulp Press, is both a history of the bourgeoning movement and a do-it-yourself handbook for prospective practitioners, complete with patterns for knitting your own balaclava or picture frame.
The authors, who first met at a “Stitch n’ Bitch” gathering, trace the origins of yarn bombing to Houston, Texas, where a knitting collective known as “Knitta Please” first tagged a stop-sign pole in 2005. With an arsenal of unfinished knitting projects on hand, the small group led by Texan knitter Magda Sayeg — codenamed PolyCotN — began “bombing” drab and derelict public spaces all over the city with brightly-coloured textiles. The juxtaposition of whimsical wool against sterile steel and concrete was soon mimicked in urban centres across the United States and in Europe, all the while being documented in the blogosphere.
In fact, the spread of technology and knit graffiti go hand in hand, according to Prain. “It was around the time when people were first starting blogs,” she says of the movement’s infancy. “There were a lot of early craft blogs that started talking about knit graffiti.”
Adopting monikers like Knit Happens, Micro-Fiber Militia, and WhoDunnKnit, tech-savvy knitting collectives made up primarily of twenty and thirty-something women — although Prain pegs male involvement at around five per cent — have since set up websites to share their temporary installations with the vast online D.I.Y. community.
“A lot of things come down within fifteen minutes, and you might have spent forty hours knitting it. That’s just part of it — you make it and you give it away. But there’s that need to document it,” Prain explains.
While the movement aims to be clandestine, the goal of knit graffiti does not necessarily have the same anarchic bent as its spray paint predecessor. Many yarn bombers are simply trying to purl and stitch their way towards urban beautification. According to Prain, “The main commonality is joy. There’s a whole bunch of different motivations for doing yarn bombing, but everybody does it because, I think, it makes them happy and they hope that it makes other people happy.”
But not everyone sees the knotty appendages as positive additions to the metropolitan backdrop. “It’s so painfully trendy,” railed one blogger in Australia in the run-up to a government-sponsored “bombing” in Sydney, calling it “a massive waste of time and human energy.”
For her part, Prain has heard critics complain that yarn bombers’ efforts would be better spent on charity efforts like knitting for the homeless. “Yarn graffiti serves the same important purpose as any other form of artistic self-expression,” Prain responded on her website, pointing out that other pastimes like sports and television are rarely critiqued as self-indulgent.
One yarn bombing installation in front of the Textile Museum of Canada in downtown Toronto last May came as a welcome surprise to museum staff. More than thirty submissions from crafters as far-flung as Oregon and the United Kingdom were donated for the event in the form of crocheted corsages, rainbow swatches, and even a knitted bike lock. The pieces were then assembled guerrilla-style in an effort to doll up the museum’s entrance on Centre Avenue.
“Some staff and volunteers had not heard of yarn bombing, but were very interested to find out about it and found it quite amusing,” says TMC Spokeswoman Alexandra Lopes. “Those of us who did know about it were, in a way, excited to be bombed.”
Although it was not involved in the event, Lopes says the museum shares a similar belief in celebrating textiles that are seen as authentic rather than mass-produced. “In some ways people look at the museum as a haven for genuine pieces,” Lopes says.
While she has not seen a huge increase in numbers amongst Toronto’s subversive knitting community, Lopes has noticed a growing zeal amongst its members. “In the past few years, certainly, the intensity and potency of the movement has increased,” she says.
In Canada, however, the West Coast remains the battleground for decidedly more political yarn bombing. In the run-up to the Vancouver Olympics, one artist known as KnitGirl displayed an altered version of the Olympics logo during a public art crawl in the city. Modifying the iconic rings to resemble knuckles, KnitGirl then stitched a middle finger in the centre of her piece.
“Now I anxiously await a $10,000 fine and/or months in prison,” KnitGirl posted on her blog after hanging the piece.
Whether intentional or not, knit graffiti falls neatly into the category of “Indie Craft,” a subversive and often politically-charged take on traditional handicraft. Here, handmade wares — be they ironic needlework, kitschy plush, or recycled jewelry — are as much a statement against hyper-consumerism and corporate culture as they are an expression of artistic individuality.
“You can’t reproduce handmade things because they’re always unique,” says Prain, who sees subversive crafts as an extension of a more sustainable way of living. “We’re at a point where everybody knows we can’t live on the planet the way we’ve been living, so we need to start doing alternate things. A lot of those are making things on your own.”
Prain points out that much of the current generation is flummoxed by seemingly simple skills; she herself didn’t pick up a pair of knitting needles until her mid-twenties. “So many of my peers don’t even know how to sew on a button.”
But forced to tighten their purse strings, many are returning to D.I.Y. as a classic way of saving money. Prain credits the popularity of yarn bombing in part to the recent economic downturn.
“People are really looking to do something that’s low-cost, that’s unique, that’s creative, and that’s fun because there have been a lot of bleak things happening in the world in the past couple of years,” she says. “Street art is accessible to everyone of every income level because it’s out there, anyone can do it.”
In fact, comedian Amy Sedaris — best known for her cult hit television series, Strangers with Candy — has showcased the appeal of handicraft in hard times with her just-released book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People. Part actual craft book, part tongue-in-cheek take on the Martha Stewarts of the world, Sedaris’ offering comes complete with chapters such as “Crafting for Jesus,” “Unreturnable Gift Giving,” and “The Joy of Poverty.”
In the book’s opening pages, Sedaris tells readers “virtually anyone without a job and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters.” Although Simple Times is littered with irony — “fornicrafting” is just one case in point — Sedaris does seem to genuinely appreciate the arts and crafts movement, and declares that her book is “not here to judge, it is about the joy of crafting!”
If nothing else, Simple Times, like yarn bombing, speaks to an effort to recast traditionally docile and domestic activities as modern and empowering. A generation of women — and a growing contingent of men — are taking up their knitting needles, sewing pins, and paintbrushes as an act that is both feminist and countercultural. With twenty-first century arts and crafts, the medium is very much part of the message.
“We’ve come back to a place where we’ve reclaimed [it], where we’re knitting because we want to,” says Prain, who describes her own mother as a hardcore feminist who refused to knit in the 1970s.
“Handicrafts can be shunned and put down by people who don’t do them and haven’t experienced them,” she muses. “But I think there’s a lot of people — not just yarn bombers, but people using other materials — that are realizing that public art can be a really positive thing.”
