Yarn Bombing

There are certain activities associated with youth, like questioning authority, and then there are other activities associated with our golden years, like knitting. The lines between the two are now blurred, so hang up your shawl and grab your needles because baby, knitting ain't just for grandma anymore. Knitting has taken on cult status, and young and old alike are going guerrilla.

Behold these innocent balls of wool, unaware of their power to change the world, one knitting needle at at time

I started innocently, learning to knit when I was a mere child, all of eight years old. Well, technically I corked before I knit, using a knitting spool. This is a craft that has been around for a hundred years, which is odd given its limitations. Take a large wooden spool, hammer four nails in a square shape around the hole, then "knit" around in circles to create a tubular chain through the middle. That's corking in a nutshell.

This is about as practical and esthetically pleasing as tongue depressor sculpture. You always end up coiling it into a potholder, or in my case, many potholders. My grandmother - a master knitter who could watch TV, chat and knit a sweater at breakneck speed without looking down at her hands - was exasperated at the energy wasted on something that resembled knitted tapeworms. She taught me to knit properly and with purpose.  I never matched her skill, but I produced a decent scarf or two. I eventually abandoned this gentle pastime in exchange for more adventurous and age appropriate pursuits like disco hopping. Knitting didn't fit my image in the 80s, but maybe it would when I got to my 80s.
 

My 20-something artist daughter convinced me to pick up my needles again. She attends university on the east coast and she taught herself to knit. Forget grandma, Google is the new mentor. Cast on, knit, purl, "tink" (knit spelled and performed backwards in order to fix a mistake) - the basics and more are all on YouTube now. She quickly mastered the art and completed complicated hats, scarves, fingerless gloves, even socks for everyone on her Christmas list. I did not advance as quickly and made panicky Skype calls with my work-in-progress - usually a scarf (okay, always a scarf) - held up to the camera. 

Requests for more raw material meant I had to make regular pilgrimages to the yarn shop. One look around told me these are not the days of my Nana's knitting. Forget garish acrylics and scratchy wools. There is now a plethora of soft, vibrant fibres - bamboo, silk, organic cotton, soy and hand-spun and hand-dyed from a variety of sheep and goats whose pedigrees are lovingly listed on the label alongside their portraits and pet names. (I kid you not, no pun intended.) The colours are enough to knock your hand-knit socks off - luscious jewel tones, earthy shades from nature and screaming electrics from Japan.

And if you have any remaining doubts about knitting being a gentlewoman's craft, let me introduce you to the concept of Yarn Bombing.

The Before, Pre Yarn Bombing

Near where I live, and a place I pass by often when I walk The Budster. And just look at their innocent little statue faces, oblivious to the yarn carnage about to take place.

 

To the uninitiated, yarn bombing is where genteel meets renegade; its the art of knit graffiti or "textile street art." An international guerrilla movement, it inspires people to take up the knitting needles and along with stealth, a disguise and a dose of chutzpa, work for total cosmic yarn domination. Fighting for political change, when expressed with yarn, becomes a message delivered with a cuddle. All over the world, girls and boys yarn bomb; even grannies are leaving their wooly calling cards in random places. It grabs the notion of knitting as a gentle craft and knocks that theory on its fuzzy behind.

It's easy. You just target a post, bike stand, bench, anything that needs yarn beautification, and covertly cover it with a hand-knit item. It can be as simple as a tiny square on a chain link fence, or a garment covering a tree, statue, or even an entire bus. Unlike graffiti, it's not permanent and it makes people smile. It might be up for only a few minutes, or it may last for years. Sometimes tags accompany the item - like the Swedish yarn bombing group called Masquerade whose motto is Nemo Attexet Sobrius! (Nobody Knits Sober!) And sometimes the pieces remain anonymous.

So bearing all this in mind, Buddy and I stumbled upon this one morning. Someone came with stealth in the night and yarn bombed the crap out of these two. 

I prefer it this way, but clearly the art gallery owners did not, as the yarn was removed after only a few days. The piece is now back to its nudie-pants state. You can tell from the way Buddy is gazing longingly into the depths of their crocheted souls that he fancies the fuzzy.

The After, post Yarn Bombing

I wait patiently, and wonder where I can stake a claim as I nurture my inner yarnarchist.

Beaver Sticks

Lottery Girl's post today reminded me of something I used to do with my kids when they were little. I was always looking for ways to occupy them at the cottage seeing as there were no computers, no internet, TV, or electronic entertainment of any kind, and the only games were card or board games which we saved for evenings or rainy afternoons. We spent the majority of time beside, in or on the lake. In the evenings, I read books aloud. We went through the entire Harry Potter series that way. As each was published, we'd head into town at midnight to buy it, and drive back in the wee hours through fog, dodging deer and porcupines on the country road. Then the kids, and sometimes my husband, would gather round and listen, hugging their knees at the exciting bits. They used to pour me a Bailey's on ice, but after they noticed I got sleepy too soon, they switched it to plain ice water. Tactical move, they said.

Anyway, because our cottage faces west, we usually get the wind blowing straight at us, and the water moves in that direction too, buffeting the dock and bringing with it all kinds of flotsam and jetsam. There has been wayward baseball caps, bait boxes, buoys, foam noodles and once, a floating water bicycle. It looked like THIS.

Now this was some cool flotsam. I figured the owner would show up for it eventually, but without any kind of identification, I could only tie it to the dock and wait. In the meantime, we had a houseful of kids who took turns trying it out and they had a blast with it. I was really sorry to see it go the next day when the owner finally did show up to claim it but he did say we could borrow it again if we wanted.

Mostly though, what washed up on our shore on a fairly regular basis were "beaver sticks" i.e., bits of stripped logs in all sizes with distinctively chewed ends from the beavers paddling around all over the lake.

So I cooked up a plan. I told the kids I needed the beaver sticks for a Special Project, and I would pay them 25 cents per stick but they had to fetch them all along our rocky shore, and bring them back to the dock. I set up my chair on the dock, along with a fat novel and a cold drink while the kids grabbed windsurfer boards, air mattresses, canoes, basically anything buoyant and set out to accumulate as many beaver sticks as they could manage before their arms gave out.

I figure it cost me a few bucks in exchange for some very peaceful afternoons.

I still have a big mound of beaver sticks under my porch. I have yet to begin my Special Project.

Speaking of amphibious bicycles, how about this one? Ya gotta love engineers!

In case you wondered what an angora rabbit looks like and were afraid to ask

This, my friends, is an angora rabbit. We all have days when we feel like this, no? They are raised for their fine angora coats and to give other rabbits a fit of the giggles.

The lady who hosted those spinning lessons I told you about kept these rabbits in her garage, right beside the stone grinder she used to grind her own wheat into flour which she used in her bread that (oh yes, I do not lie) she Baked Every Day.

Back to the rabbits...

Despite their cute and fluffy appearance, her wascally wabbits were wild and wooly in the truest sense. They struggled and bit her like rabid vampires when she brushed them. In all fairness to the bunny, wouldn't you if you looked like this and someone tried to brush you? But she seemed to think it was worth the effort and I had to sort of agree after I fondled one of her lacy scarves made of an angora/silk mix. What was that? Silk, I hear you say. Why, wherever did she get raw silk to spin?

Yes, the same woman who raised the hairy bunnies and ground her own wheat berries also raised silk worms in her basement.

Here is a silk worm. Not nearly as cuddly as the bunny, but these don't bite and scratch.

You do, however, have to get past the ick factor. I don't mind. I'll take worms over rabbits any day. We had a rabbit as a pet when the kids were young which we dubbed The Killer Bunny. If you're familiar with Monty Python skits, you'll know what I'm talking about. We were assured by the pet store guy that it was a male and very cuddly but it turned out to be high strung and totally irrational and unpredictable in its behavior. I wouldn't have thought there could be so much energy in such a tiny, furry little body, but this rabbit scared the bejeezus out of me.

There was no way anyone could even stroke it, let alone hold it. (An aside: I just asked Eldest in the other room, "What was the name of our bunny?" and she said, "You mean Killer Bunny? The Monty Python Bunny? Did it even have a name?")

In order to change its cage, I had to lock myself with the rabbit in a closed room. I dressed in a long, thick winter coat, and my husband's leather work gloves as Bunny had a tendency to leap from the ground, bite a leg and retreat. Did you read that? It could, and did, Leap From The Ground and bite our legs.

The last straw for me (like biting my leg wasn't enough) was when I gently picked it up to put it back in its cage, and it screamed in a pitch so high and unearthly that all the hairs on my body stood on end. It was like receiving an electric shock. I didn't think rabbits could even made that sound. The kids' science teacher offered to take it, and shortly thereafter, the "boy" bunny gave birth to a bunch of baby bunnies, which explained the crazy behavior according to the eejit clerk at the pet store. Anyway, the Mommy Bunny, post-natal, calmed right down and lived happily ever after, and I said goodbye to rabbits forever, unless they come in the form of hassenpfeffer.

So back to the silkworms. These are the cocoons from which the silk is unraveled and spun.

Cool silkworm factoids:

Fact: The only thing silk worms eat is mulberry leaves. Fact: My next door neighbour has two mulberry bushes in her front yard. Food for thought. And for silk worms.

Fact: Unlike spiders, the silk comes out of the silkworm's mouth, and the silk is actually hardened saliva. Fact: That fashionable silk blouse is made of worm spit.

Fact: The silkworm moves its head in a figure 8 patterns as it produces the silk. Fact: Not 7, and never 9 or 2.

Fact: Each silk worm cocoon, about 2 inches long, produces one unbroken strand of silk about a mile long. Fact: This is about how long my weekly grocery bags would be if you lined them up, end to end.

Fact: It takes 1,000 cocoons to produce about 4 ounces of raw silk. Fact: This is enough for one shirt. No seriously. It's enough for one shirt. And it takes 2,000 for one dress.

Right now I can drive to the wool shop down the road and just pick up some silk worms someone else raised. But I'm thinking there might be room in my house for a few.

How hard could it be? It's got to be easier than goats or llamas or little bunny rabbits.