Yarn bombing: Activism even granny would approve of
When I was a kid, my Oma was always making me sweaters and toques that my mom would force me to wear on family camping trips or at Christmas time. Mostly, I thought they were ugly (sorry, Oma!).
Because of this, I’ve always thought that knitting was something old ladies did because they had too much time on their hands. You can imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that men and women from all over the world, most of them under 40, have become guerrilla knitters.
That’s right—they’re like Che Guevara with yarn.
They call it yarn bombing, or knit graffiti, and it can take almost any form. It’s a kind of cross-disciplinary artistic expression that combines the vision of installation art with the technical proficiency of crochet and the activism of graffiti.
While many people may not consider knitting to be a political activity, in this age of bigger, better, faster, and instant, simply making something by hand can make a powerful statement.
The learning curve
The subversive form of this traditional pastime was spearheaded by a group called Knitta Please from Texas, and has quickly become a worldwide phenomenon.
“There’s something really fun about juxtaposing textile arts with something like graffiti, which is known to be a bit subversive,” says Vancouver artist Leanne Prain, co-author of Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti.
Prain’s love affair with guerrilla knitting actually started as an online romance. “I’m really into making things, so I read a lot of craft blogs,” explains Prain. “I came across the work of Knitta, then I discovered other guerrilla knitters and their pieces just really captured my attention.”
Although Prain enjoyed knitting, she quickly realized she would need to reach out to her community if she was going to take her hobby any further.
“I learned one stitch from my friend Janet, then I taught her the next stitch, and then we realized that we didn’t really know how to do anything else, so we started a stitch-and-bitch called ‘knitting and beer’ at a local pub,” says Prain.
It was there that Prain met the book’s co-author, Mandy Moore.
For Prain, the idea to put together a book about knit graffiti originated as a school project. She was attending a Masters of Publishing course at SFU and needed to pitch a project idea to local publishers. One of them, Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press, later approached her about making the book a reality.
That was when Prain first started tagging public spaces with her woven creations.
Going public
“I didn’t get into doing any tagging of my own until I started writing this book with Mandy,” says Prain. “I just really fell in love with the street-art aspect of knitting.”
And it didn’t stop there. Prain and Moore have done lots of small pieces around Vancouver, and Prain has done pieces in Portland, throughout BC, and in Washington, DC.
“I pretty much take something with me wherever I travel,” says Prain. “Between here and the interior of BC, there’s a street called Anarchy Place, so of course I had to tag that.”
Prain defines knit graffiti as “any sort of knit or crochet that is attached to a structure out in the public environment.” She believes that people’s reasons for becoming guerrilla knitters are as varied as the colors of their work.
“There are people who do it as an art form, there are people who do it as an expression of anger, there are people who do it because they want to claim their space,” she says. “Some people do it as a way to show their craft, some people do it just because it’s fun, and some people want to engage other people. But most people do it out of a sense of joy.”
Activism even your grandma will love
Christine Comrie, member of the UVic knitting club the Commuknits, has her own definition of guerrilla knitting.
“It’s an act of deviance, of engaging with the community in a way that people find less offensive than some other forms of social activism,” she says.
Comrie first learned how to knit from her grandmother (I knew grandmothers would get involved here somehow). She decided to stay home with her grandma one day while her friends went to the mall again and ended up having a great ol’ time with her.
“I stayed home with my grandma so she wouldn’t be left at home by herself,” she recalls. “She taught me to knit, and we spent the entire day knitting and talking while everybody else was out shopping.”
After that day, Comrie continued to forgo the mall in favour of her grandmother’s company. She places a lot of value on those times that she sat and connected with her grandma.
“I learned so much about my heritage while knitting with her,” she says. “She ended up getting Alzheimer’s disease, so if we hadn’t spent time knitting together and talking, I would’ve missed out on so much of the experiences of her life. It’s the kind of information that we’re supposed to get from our elders, but so many people don’t,” she says.
Comrie’s interest in knitting diminished in her teens, but in recent years she has rediscovered her love of yarn.
“When I first started knitting again, everything was really old school, tacky stuff, so it was all about finding new, more useful things to knit. Then I discovered this guerrilla-knitting thing,” she says. “The first time I saw it, this girl in Victoria had knit an entire street sign. It was perfect; it had the street name, 600 block, everything. The tagger had slid it onto the real street sign and I thought, ‘That is so cool!’ because it’s harmless, but at the same time it’s graffiti.”
Although Comrie admired traditional graffiti, she didn’t really know how to draw, so she decided to embark on her first guerrilla-knitting project.
“I thought it was really interesting, so I talked to some friends of mine and we got together for a day and knit a cozy for this railing in the UVic Student Union Building,” she says. “People ask me questions about it all the time, and I feel that it really adds to the building.”
Prain and Moore have also experienced similar reactions to their graffiti.
“I find when we leave something out in the world or someone catches us putting something up, they react to it, usually positively,” says Prain. “It’s fuzzy, it’s warm, it doesn’t really cause any harm, it’s sort of a way of showing off your skills.”
Men can knit too
But apart from being involved in a form of graffiti, there’s another social faux pas at work here—being under 50 and taking up knitting as a pastime comes with its own stigma.
“It’s considered to be something that old or anti-social people do,” says Prain.
She believes part of the modern-day aversion to knitting originated during the women’s liberation movement.
“My mom can do every single craft you can think of,” she explains. “She makes willow chairs, weaves baskets, does embroidery, sews and cans her own food, but there was something sort of tainted about knitting in the ’70s. Women didn’t want to touch it.”
Although knitting is now seen as a primarily feminine hobby, it hasn’t always been that way.
“Originally most knitting was done by men,” says Prain. “There were knitting guilds in Europe in the 18th century and only men could be members. And in order to become a professional knitter, you had to be licensed.”
It wasn’t until many years later that knitting became the domain of the female population.
More than yarn
Comrie enjoys the activist side of knitting, but also feels it connects her to the traditional values of times past.
“Many of us have learned to knit from our grandmothers,” says Comrie. “Not too many things in our society are connected to the past anymore. The skills our elders had to make everyday things have mostly been lost. My grandmother knew how to sew, she knew how to cook, and she knew how to knit. These days we sit and we watch TV or work on computers, but it’s all mental stuff.”
Prain agrees that it’s important for people to learn these skills.
“With knit graffiti maybe you’re not using them in a traditional way, but you’re still making things by hand,” she says.
She adds that learning how to make things by hand instills people with an appreciation of the time it takes to do so.
“There’s not a lot of consciousness in the public about how long these things take because we’re so used to going to the Gap and just buying a sweater,” she says.
Another thing Prain enjoys about guerrilla knitting is that it forces the artist to practice the very Buddhist idea of non-attachment.
“When someone makes something by hand, usually that thing becomes something cherished that you hang onto,” she explains. “With knit graffiti it’s not like that because you spend quite a lot of time making a piece, and then you just put it out there. It may become weather-beaten or vandalized or get cut down, so it’s no longer this thing that becomes a family heirloom, you just put it out there in the world and hope it brings someone joy.”
How to make friends and become a guerrilla knitter
First of all, you’ve got to learn how to knit. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Like any skill worth having, learning to knit takes time and can be frustrating at first. Don’t give up! Ask around at your local yarn store to find out if there’s a knitting group in your area. Chances are they’ll be more than happy to teach you how to knit, and you might even find some fellow yarn bombers to make friends with.
Now you’ve got to buy yourself some equipment. Luckily, you only need a bit of yarn and either a crochet hook or some knitting needles. In their book, Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti, Moore and Prain say it’s important for your first ball of yarn to be smooth, not fuzzy or knobby, so you can see what you’re doing. They also recommend buying your equipment from a yarn store instead of a secondhand shop, if you can afford it.
Knit your first tag. Starting off with something simple and rectangular is probably your best bet. You can always glue some ribbons, patches, and cool buttons on afterward to jazz it up a little.
Get out there and tag something! Choose a location and just go out and do it. Although yarn bombing may technically be considered illegal, chances are no one is going to give you a hard time for decorating a pole or two with some pretty wool. Remember to bring along some fairly thick thread and a needle of some sort so you can sew your tag on.
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