Insurgent knitters blanket Acacia Park
Temperatures topped out in the mid 70s Saturday, but the trees in Acacia Park were clothed for a winter chill.
With limbs and trunks wrapped in eye-catching sweaters of green, blue and yellow yarn, six trees were given a splash of character from 30 local knitters in celebration of the first International Yarn Bombing Day.
A new hobby for some participants, yarn bombing involves taking knitted or crochet pieces to the streets — adorning statues, lampposts, fences and any piece of public property worthy of a colorful, woolly creation. Often, it’s a way to use scrap yarn that would otherwise be thrown away.
For knitters, bombing adds excitement to the hobby when making sweaters, socks and scarves becomes mundane.
“It’s fun. If you do any kind of yarn work, after a while you get tired of making functional things,” local artist and event organizer Juanita Canzoneri said. “That is the beauty of yarn bombing.”
And indeed the freedom to hook and purl outside the lines was the main attraction to some participants who learned of the event through knitting groups.
Together, they assembled 300 squares — each piece exhibiting the knitter’s individual style, from flowers to Hello Kitty.
Still early in the morning, a group hovered around the last tree to be decorated, diligently wrapping the limbs with abstract squares. As Jennifer Eltringham stretched to connect the ends of her bright yellow square with cotton thread, she looked pleased.
“I like it a lot,” she said, admiring the hodgepodge of striped and embellished yarn squares. “I’m going to tell all of my friends to come see it.”
Later in the afternoon, passerby Bill Hoopes stopped to snap a picture with his camera phone.
“I love it because it just makes everything more beautiful,” Hoopes said.
While yarn bombing is new to some, the trend got its birth in Houston, Texas, in 2005 and has since traveled across the globe, with structures as large as buses and bridges getting hit by yarn bombers. The celebratory day itself is the result of one woman’s bout of insomnia this winter.
“I was just going, ‘What if we just picked one day out of the year?’ I wasn’t really thinking worldwide at that point,” said International Yarn Bomb Day founder Joann Matvichuk of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. “It went crazy from there.”
And by crazy, Matvichuk means the more than 3,400 Facebook event attendees from across the map including Argentina, France, Italy, Iceland and Finland.
“What were trying to do is get together on one day and bring color and beauty to our urban landscape, which is in some cases very drab and concrete and boring,” Matvichuk said.
And after the yarn in Acacia Park comes down on June 25, expect to see more evidence of yarn bombing around town.
“I’ll keep on doing it,” said participant Lesli Weaver, who has independently completed 20 yarn bombs in her spare time. “I’m kind of connected with it.”
Nikki Klopfenstein, center, and other knitters cover trees with yarn Saturday in Acacia Park as part of International Yarn Bombing day. The group organized though the Yarn Bomb Colorado Springs Facebook page and began knitting the tree cozies in May. The installation will be in Acacia Park for two weeks until June 25. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE
Tish Dudevoir, front, and Carol Tonneson cover a tree with a cozy Saturday in Acacia Park as part of International Yarn Bombing day. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE
Katie Meadows and other knitters cover trees with yarn Saturday in Acacia Park as part of International Yarn Bombing day. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE