Most yarn begins with a fairly predictable future. It will become a sweater or a pair of socks, unless it ends up resting in a basket as an unfinished project with no immediate plans (second sock syndrome, missing ribbing, unjoined granny squares, or, the worst offender, the missing sleeve). Sometimes, though, yarn makes a break for it. It leaves the craft room and wraps itself around a tree, a lamppost, a statue, or an unsuspecting post box. This is yarn bombing, a form of temporary street art made with knitted or crocheted fabric. It is part public art and part the-secret-life-of-knitters-and-crocheters.
The modern yarn-bombing movement began with an ordinary as a door handle. In 2005, Houston artist Magda Sayeg covered the handle of her boutique with a small blue and pink knitted cozy because the entrance felt cold and impersonal. That was it. No grand artistic declaration. No plan to cover half the world’s stationary objects in wool. She simply thought the door needed something. People noticed. That small experiment led to the fiber-art group Knitta Please and eventually to installations around the world.
In the United States, yarn bombing has taken on many forms as there are myriad inanimate objects waiting to be covered. Installations have appeared on parking meters, bridge railings, benches, trees, and entire building fronts. Some are bright splashes of color. Others make statements about community and who gets to create art in public spaces. Yarn Bombing Los Angeles, a collective active since 2010, has created large collaborative installations that sit somewhere between street art and fiber art. American yarn bombers do not have one particular object that defines the movement. The city and all of its various neighborhoods has become the canvas.
There is something truly wonderful about placing yarn where it clearly does not belong. A metal railing is useful as is a water meter or recycling bin. Add a fitted sleeve of stripes, flowers, granny squares, or bobbles, and the object has not changed, but the way we look at it has. It reminds me of seeing trash cans painted with animals or flowers. You know perfectly well it is still a trash can, but now it is a trash can someone cared enough to turn into a giraffe. Installations interrupt the hard surfaces of a city with something handmade and visibly touched by another person.
Then there are the British post boxes.
This is my real reason for writing this blog. The British post box decorations make me want to vacation somewhere with even more rain than Portland, Oregon (which is saying something). Well, that and my desire to visit 84 Charing Cross Road.
In the United Kingdom, the familiar red post box has become one of yarn bombing’s most popular targets. Knitters and crocheters top them with miniature village streets, animals, poppies, seaside scenes, and holiday characters. Some displays commemorate national events or honor someone in the community. Others seem to exist because a boring street corner needed a knitted sheep (or a herd of sheep) standing on it. The post box remains unmistakably a post box, but for a while it also becomes a tiny stage set. People stop to look closely and take pictures. The UK yarn-bombing Facebook group is worth a look if you want to see just how elaborate these toppers can become.
These toppers are more complicated than they first appear. Figures must stand upright, the background must fit, the seams must hold, and the entire structure has to survive British weather. Wet yarn gets heavy. A topper that looked magnificent on the kitchen table may behave quite differently after a long afternoon in the rain. It also needs to fit without covering the collection slot or identifying markings. The idea is to attract attention without preventing the post box from doing its actual job, because even a knitted masterpiece still must leave room for the actual mail. Many of the displays are community projects. One person crochets the figures, while another knits the base. Someone works out how to attach it, and someone else fixes the part that refuses to cooperate. Organizations such as St Albans Postboxes have used decorated post boxes to raise money for charity, giving all that creativity a practical purpose as well.
Of course, public objects do not automatically become available because someone has an excellent idea and several leftover skeins. Permission to decorate is needed, particularly for monuments or working infrastructure. Installations must also be removed before they become waterlogged or damaging. Yarn wound tightly around a growing tree can eventually cause problems, so temporary really should mean temporary. Maybe that's part of the appeal. Yarn bombing is not supposed to last forever. For a little while, an object we stopped noticing becomes worth looking at again. Then the yarn comes down, and the post box returns to its regular life. It also makes me wonder how many perfectly respectable British people are walking around with a crochet hook and the measurements of a post box tucked into their pocket.
Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti
Blog photo by Michael Garlick, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped from the original.