Ep. 14 – Yarn bombing, would you do it!?

Have you ever heard of yarn bombing? While we both have, neither of us have tried it but we want to! In today’s episode we explain what yarn bombing is and share all our thoughts on this yarn-y street art.

How was your week?

Dani

• She’s working on a project which she isn’t allowed to tell us about just yet, but it has been keeping her quite busy.  We all hate when people talk about secret projects but now that she’s working on one, she understands why people mention them, you want to be present and justify yourself that you are working on something behind the scenes even though you can’t share about it. 

Nathalie

• We’ve been working on finishing our basement so I can have a dedicated office space again but although we’ve made progress and are almost done painting; only missing one coat of paint on the walls before we can move on to flooring, progress has been slow this week. Everything has gotten in the way of that one last coat of paint and delayed things, but we bought the basement doors tonight so now that those are in the house and in the way, it’ll force us to get it done no matter what. 

What did you buy this week?

Nathalie

• I bought a neck reading light from Amazon. You obviously wear it around your neck, but you can move each arm/side around to point in whichever direction you prefer. It has three light intensities setting and three colour temperature setting (you can have yellow, warm white or cool white). You can turn on each arm individually too. It’s perfect for late night reading in bed, knitting or crocheting on a road trip (as a passenger obviously), to give you that extra light you need if you’re working with dark yarn or just enough light to see what you’re doing while watching a movie or show. 

Dani

• She decided to get her early Mother’s Day gift to herself and bought both the Dyson Hair Dryer and the Dyson AirWrap (which she mentioned wanting to buy in episode 12).  Even though the AirWrap has a hair dryer attachment, she ended up buying both because the actual Hair Dryer is of course much better than the attachment one. She said they are worth the hype so far as they leave you feeling like you just left the hair salon.
• She also got so smaller things like a cute pair of scissors, new earrings, and some hair towels. 
• Finally, she bought some leather covers for her craft scissors. We like our scissors sharp but when they don’t have a case, they can be dangerous so buying a case to protect the new pencil case she got to use as a notions bag in replacement of the belt bag she’d been using lately. 

What are you working on?

Dani

• She finally has a project to actually work on! She’s working on a Novice Cardigan (pattern from Petite Knit) for her daughter using Malabrigo Verano which is a 100% cotton yarn in colour Cotton Candy. 

Nathalie

• I have my “podcast project” (the Flax Light Sweater I’ve been working on lately) nearby but I’m working on my son’s first year of life temperature blanket today! I’m using worsted weight yarn and making teeny tiny solid granny squares. I’m aiming for a crib sized blanket which he can use as a blankie and carry around everywhere rather than a bigger blanket but I’m hoping to tweak the pattern to have both a bigger version as well. 

Now let’s talk about today’s subject – Yarn bombing, would you do it!?

What is yarn bombing?

Let’s first mention that yarn bombing is not attacking people with yarn! Yarn bombing is essentially when you knit or crochet something and put it unexpected places. People have yarn bombed light posts, trees, postal service boxes and anything else that is part of day-to-day life and is just boring or ugly to look at. Yarn bombing makes these things cute, fun, colorful and happy. It brings a little happiness and makes people smile. 

Have we done it?

Neither of us have tried it but we both are into in and would love to do it. 

Rules of yarn bombing

While we don’t think there are any set rules or permission required to yarn bomb, it bears to mention to be environment conscious. Using natural fibers would be recommended; you don’t want birds or critters to be affected by man-made acrylic yarn which they could eat. Wrapping trees isn’t ideal either as the yarn won’t grow with the tree and may hinder its growth. 

Yarn bombing community

There are yarn bombing groups on Facebook that you can join where people share what they’ve done and inspire each other. There are also some yarn bombing events where they organise for everyone to make whatever and then gets together in one area to put it all together (think something like granny squares assembled and put on every light post in a certain area). 

What would we yarn bomb?

We think yarn bombing children parks would be so fun. Think adding a flower granny square to a kid’s play structure. It would be such a talked about feature by the kids. They would love it. 

Other considerations

Yarn bombing doesn’t have to be complicated, making a simple square or rectangle is enough, making it colorful I think is the most important part. Consider the fact that it may get destroyed by the elements or removed.

Examples we’ve seen

The most beautiful example Dani has seen was a picture of yarn bombing in Mexico where people had gotten together and crocheted these big colorful squares which were seamed together and hung from buildings on either side above a street to provide shade for the passersby.

I’ve seen a post on Facebook where people had gotten together (I think it was for a World Guinness Record or something similar) and joined tons of granny squares together and used them to cover these super wide and long outdoor stairs.

It feels like yarn bombing is especially popular in Spain where the fiber community is quite extensive. 

Yarn bombing goals

We both think it would be fun to yarn bombing a little something by ourselves every year and go back to check on the past year’s bombing to see how they’ve held up, and if they are still there or not. 

Another form of yarn bombing?

I’m not sure whether that qualifies as yarn bombing or not, but I’ve seen these posts where people crochet or knit small items and leave them in public places along with a note saying something like “I’m not lost, I was left here for you to find. I hope I made you smile if you were having a bad day…”. Sometimes the notes have a hashtag on them which people can use to find a group and share what they found and where. 

As always if you have any questions, comments, thoughts or even podcast topics ideas, please email us at: dropastitchpodcast@gmail.com. 

Have a great week everyone!