In which I make my yarnbombing debut

Yarnbombing has intrigued me for a long time, but I hadn’t gotten around to trying it myself until yesterday. Headed out for a walk, I stopped to lock my office door and saw a castoff scrap of knitting lying on a shelf. Into my pocket it went – and here’s where it ended up (with my finger in the picture for scale):


Adorning a manzanita tree in the park. This started life as a tiny baby sock – but it was too small and picky and no fun, so I gave up on it.  I hadn’t bound off the live stitches, so I left them as is – I like the way they look:


Kind of like a sea anemone, from this perspective.  I left the yarn tail hanging, thinking some passing human (or bird, even) might be tempted to pull on it. It would be interesting if it were slowly unraveled:


We shall see.  The park gets a lot of use, and I often walk there, so odds are good it will be noticed and I’ll be able to check on it.

Urban yarnbombing is what’s most visible on the web – and probably out in the world too.  (In the Bay Area, I particularly admire the work of Streetcolor. Not only is it beautiful, but the yarn is all handspun – on a drop spindle, at that.)  But I don’t live in the city – I’m surrounded by nature at home, and my most frequent public outings are not to town or city but to local parks, to run, walk, and take pictures. So I thought it would be fun to yarnbomb in natural places – and on a small scale, so that only folks who are really looking at their surroundings will notice.

Inspiration for that sort of yarnbombing came to me from Jan ter Heide and Evelien Verkerk’s Knitted Landscape project, which goes back to 2006. Click here for photos – I especially love this one (the location is Ireland):


This photo suggested to me that it would be fun to knit up a supply of small tubes and/or bags, as the whim takes me, carry one or two with me whenever I’m headed out, and slip them over a stone or stick. I’ll show you a picture when I do.