Wednesday, May 8, 2013

What's the point of yarn bombing?

You may have seen my tweet earlier today about a conversation I had with a mum at school.

It went a bit like this:
suzy "I've finally finished this scarf I've been working on...it's nearly 2m long!"
mum "I love long scarves. Did I ever tell you that I found my favourite scarf wrapped around a lamp pole in St Kilda?"
suzy "Dude, you just stole someone's yarn bombing?"
mum "Their yarn-what?"

Magda Sayeg (above & below)

Judging from your reactions on twitter and Facebook most of you were as horrified as I was. I was at least to start with, but I've been mulling over it all day.

Yarn bombing.
What's the point of it?
Is it to 'warm up sterile places' as Wikipedia would have us believe, to spread the love of our craft around or have a bit of 'not too naughty' fun? I'm actually not sure.

I do know that there is surely a risk to leaving our precious project out in public, that the other end of the demographical spectrum ie. the non-knitters, haven't even heard of yarn bombing and would therefore not understand why we would wrap scarves around light poles, except maybe for them to have.

But, do you think we could go so far as a creative community to accepting the odd pilfering of our bombs? That some of them end up in needy hands, or that they might inspire someone to learn how to knit?

Your thoughts?
suzy xoxo

5 comments:

  1. I don't like it - mostly. Mainly because, on the whole, it's ugly. The steps you've shown are one of the only pieces of yarn bombing I've seen that isn't ugly, the other being a tree covered with white crochet doilies that had been sewn together beautifully, it looked gorgeous. But scrappy pieces of acrylic knitting and crochet hastily sewn onto light poles etc - do not like!
    But if people like doing it, and if it makes people smile, then more power to them!
    (The scarf might have been meant to be taken and worn - I've seen people do that too, make scarves and tie them around light poles etc, for people to take, sharing the knitwear love, so to speak!)

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  2. I often leave my knitted hats and scarves in areas where the homeless gather. There may be several sitting atop or tied around poles or fenceposts, all in a row. It sometimes seems less intrusive than trying to offer them face to face. It never occured to me that anyone would think they were "yarnbombing".

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  3. I appreciate the effort that goes into it, and all of the colour. I've seen a bit of it up here in the Blue Mountains and I'll happily admit that it makes me smile, even if it is ugly, because I don't feel alone in my love of sharing my knitting with the world. We all just express that love differently :D

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  4. If someone took a yarbomb I had made and it becamt their favourite scarf, that would be pretty cool...even though I would never know

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  5. as part of our local library's sanctioned yarn bombing last year, a toy Boston Terrier [ Bob ] was given a blankie and a lead and tied up outside the front steps where local canine patrons hang out. Even after the other yarn thingies were taken down - including the knitted bike - Bob remained. Someone added a water bowl & Library staff kept it filled.
    Then Bob's blankie was pinched so I added a new one.
    Then Bob, blankie & lead all went.
    There have so far been at least three replacement toy dogs with lead. Every time one gets nicked, someone replaces it.
    What this says about Castlemaine I'm not sure, but there you are.

    and we will not speak further of the knitted dog 'business' that turned up at one point. All usual suspects have been questioned and all deny knowledge :P

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Thank you for taking the time to read my blog...I especially love it when I get comments. Have a great day, suzy xoxo

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