When you think about the materials that make up urban places--concrete, brick, plastic, metal--you don't ordinarily think of yarn.
Yarn bombers, also known at knit taggers, are out to change that. They knit things that are meant to be worn outdoors, but not by people. They wrap their knitting around poles on the street or install it on chain link fences. It's part graffiti, part handicraft.
If you've seen knitting-covered objects in the Twin Cities, you've probably seen the work of yarn bombers. They've covered a big rock at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance at the University of Minnesota, decorated a structural column outside
Borealis Yarns at Thomas and Hamline in St. Paul, and enlivened the Cleveland Avenue overpass above I-94.
It's a
national trend that a few years ago took hold in the fertile, active knitting culture of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, which, according to
Radio K, supports the greatest number of yarn shops per capita of any place in the United States.
These days, knitters of all ages learn stitches and share knit-tagging
techniques at meetups such as
"Drunken Knit Night" at
Merlin's Rest. One knitter who has taken it to the streets, Ann Rojas, says a friend of her
daughter's learned to knit for the sole purpose
of practicing yarn bombing.
"The stereotype of the old lady knitting at home is not too current," says Rojas, whose own yarn-bombing-in-progress once drew the attention of a St. Paul police officer. "I sent him on his way," she says.
Source: Ann Rojas
Writer: Chris Steller