Mandy Moore Wild Hope

Crafters take art to the street

It had to happen: Someday, somewhere a woman would grow tired of knitting yet another baby blanket, Fair Isle sweater or pair of colorful socks. And then what?

Well, then we get fire hydrants decked out in fuzzy vests, light poles and tree trunks wrapped in colorful, textile love, and other outrageous acts of knit graffiti. Also known as yarn bombing, yarnstorming and guerrilla knitting.

Maybe you’ve seen the handiwork in a city or suburb near you, even out in the wild. The randomness of it is the point, say these fiber artists.

“It’s really fun to surprise people,” says “Esther,” a member of the Ladies Fancywork Society in Denver who prefers her anonymity. “You don’t expect to see a crochet-wrapped bike loop (rack).”

The four crocheting ladies, who took their street names from their grandmothers, tagged the big blue bear that peers into the Denver Convention Center in April with a crocheted 8-foot ball of blue yarn, attached to the 42-foot bear with a crocheted chain. Last summer, they were awarded a public arts grant and spent six weeks embellishing a construction-site metal fence with 360 feet of crocheted flowers.

“Street art is so aggressive and masculine,” Esther, 25, reflects. “It’s great to have a counterpoint to it. A hyper-girlie touch.”

So, rogue knitters and subversive crocheters do it for the art, the attention and the thrill.

And folks, they mean well.

“Not everybody is going to love it, and that’s one of the reasons it’s fun. You’re doing something that’s not sanctioned,” says Leanne Prain, 34, who co-wrote the book on yarn bombing. Well, one of the books: 2009’s Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti , with Mandy Moore, from Arsenal Pulp Press.

Transforming the twin crafts in this public manner is liberating for a lot of crafters, says Prain, of Vancouver, Canada.

“My hope is it expands what people think of as art and who can make art,” Prain says.

Knit graffiti artists often “tag” their sites on the sly, even at night. They target street signs and light posts, but avoid interfering with a sign’s purpose. Sometimes the tags are removed quickly — often by passersby — but others can go unnoticed and remain for weeks, even years. That’s part of the thrill for the yarnstormers.

Many consider the mother of knit graffiti to be Magda Sayeg of Austin, Texas. In 2005, she knitted a cozy for the door handle at her Houston clothing shop. Reaction to that simple, bright handle propelled Sayeg, now 37, into covert acts of knit graffiti. Her tagging grew bolder: In 2008, she and a six-person team covered a Mexico City bus in colorful Afghan blankets.

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