Extreme Yarn-bombing

(A bicycle stays warm in Lidkoping, Sweden)

You would have to have had your eyes shut for the past twenty years not to have noticed the odd lamp-post sporting a 'leg-warmer', or a statue muffled in a jaunty scarf.

Welcome to the zany world of what has now become known as 'yarn-bombing', sometimes also called yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting or graffiti knitting. It is unclear why someone would spend the time and effort to knit or crochet a cover for a bicycle (or a car, or even - yes, really – a bus!) but they do it.

Houston artist Bill Davenport was creating and exhibiting crochet-covered objects in Houston in the 1990s, and artist Shanon Schollian was knitting stump 'cosies' in 2002 for clear cuts in Oregon. Magda Sayeg, also from Houston, first got the idea in 2005 when she covered the door handle of her boutique with a custom-made cozy.

(Helsinki Town Hall steps covered in afghan squares)

The innovation of the 'stitched story' has been attributed to Lauren O'Farrell (who creates her street art under the graffiti knitting name Deadly Knitshade), from London, UK, who founded the city's first graffiti knitting collective Knit the City.

(A cosied-up Mexican bus)

As all quirky ideas do, yarn-bombing has spread worldwide. Watch out for it, as there may be some busy knitters working on warming up and brightening your own town or city right now!

But it's not always soft and cosy in yarn-bombing world, as one Mexican knit one-purl one fan discovered.....

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