Guerilla knitting improves the world one stitch at a time

By Eyeswoon, on November 19th, 2010

What is it about the weather turning colder that makes me want to take out my knitting needles and yarn? But what to knit this year?

Maybe a bookcover?

“Berkeley Big People,” a sculpture which immortalizes Berkeley’s greatest protests, located in Berkeley, California.

It goes by many names: guerilla knitting, yarn bombing, knit graffiti, fiber tagging. Whatever it’s called, it’s everywhere now, from Berkeley, New York, Scotland to Berlin.

On July 7, 2010, the Berkleyside, Berkeley California’s independent local news site reported that the sculpture, Berkeley Big People, was struck by underground knitting activists.

On Sept 26, 2010, Global Graphica reported a Volkswagen Beetle and a bicycle found completely wrapped in bright-colored knitted yarn on Elizabeth Street, in the Chinatown-Nolita area of the Lower East Side, in downtown New York City.

from Global Graphica, http://www.globalgraphica.com/

In Scotland, a group of art activists, called the Sundogs, yarn bombed a 12-foot tall Celtic cross with a bright red knitted outfit at a graveyard in Inverness. They posted the knitting pattern they constructed for the cross on a blog for Public Art Scotland.

Check out Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain to learn more about this phenomenon.