Pretty Bombs

As I drove through my city one afternoon I saw a public garbage can entirely wrapped in red and blue yarn; I thought it was for some special art appreciation day. A couple of weeks later I was walking on the street and saw another garbage can covered in colored yarn and, as I looked around, I saw street lamps with colored yarn wrapped around them too. I really thought this was particular to my city until I read about yarn bombing.

Yarn bombing is street art and graffiti, a form of gentle, pretty, artistic vandalism, whose main purpose is to transform cold, hard urban fixtures, such as lampposts, mailboxes, trees, benches, bicycles, parking meters by wrapping them with knitted covers and wraps.

This colorful practice originated in Houston, Texas a few years ago when a shop owner knitted a pink and blue cover for the door handle of her boutique and now yarn bombing is becoming an international sensation of pop art. These secret graffiti knitters are taking on bigger challenges by covering cars, buses, statues, and tree trunks. That’s a lot of knitting! Have you witnessed yarn bombing in your city?