Sunday, October 24, 2010

Yarn bombing

I never really paid much attention to graffiti until a few weeks ago when Joe told me about Banksy. Since then, I started paying a little more attention to graffiti that I saw around the city. This is one I noticed a few weeks ago along 17th Avenue on my way to hot yoga:

(photo taken by The Yarn Geek)

I decided to look it up and it is called yarn bombing or graffiti knitting - and is a type of street art. Joe says he sees it a lot in the Kensington area of the city and I will be there next weekend for Market Collective so am going to take a bit of a walk around to try to find some more.


(More Calgary yarn bombs by the Calgary ArtBomber)

Have you ever seen yarn bombs in your city?

9 comments:

Heartfire At Home said...

We don't have any of that sort of stuff around here (I think my city is waaaayyyy to conservative), but I've seen pics of whole buses covered in knitting. A whole bus!!!! Amazing. Also a street's worth of posts, mailboxes, bins, anything that stands still for enough time to be covered in knitting can be targeted by these guys! It's a heap better to look at than normal graffiti in my opinion, although it IS still graffiti and technically breaking the law! It adds a very textural and cosy sort of element too.

Bubbles said...

I've seen graffitti with spray paint on train crossing areas but never have I come across yarn bombing it seems to funny and such an odd thing to do. I can't imagine how long it would have taken someone to knit for that lamp post.

Signe said...

Hahaha, that is hilarious!
Such a clever and fun idea and a perfect start to my monday :)

Jude said...

I love the idea of yarn bombing but this is the first time I've seen a real life example! So creative and fun :)

I love Banksy's work, and hope you get to witness it 'on the streets' too!

Meghan said...

Haha, I love the idea too, and it would take forever! But today, I drove by that bus stop on 17th Ave and sadly, it was gone. Hopefully I find more around this weekend!

I would LOVE to see Banky's work in real life. We might be heading to Europe next summer (fingers crossed!) and I want to go back to London just to find some!

molly said...

ohmygoodness! that is so amazing!! i've never ever heard of this or seen this... i will most definitely have to keep my eye out. it's so much better than spray paint graffiti!

molly said...

BAHAHAHAHA joel sachs! that's hilarious. i sat at the back of his history class freshman year with my computer desperately hoping he wouldn't see that i was on facebook the entire time. what a... special... man :-P

LatteLisa said...

that is funny ... I wonder if they put this up in the middle of the night wearing knitted black outfits and a matching mask ;-)

Meghan said...

Molly - What a funny connection we have :)

Lisa - Ha! I can just picture it! Hilarious!