Pirates or Football?

Last week, my husband and I spent a few days in Hamburg. I used to live there, and my family still does, so we visited with my mother and went out to lunch with her, my dad and my gran, whom I hadn't seen in two years. She is too old to come to Heidelberg, and last year we didn't manage to go to Hamburg, so that was quite a long time. It was nice to catch up, and we had a good time and good food. My gran is always interested in my spinning and the shop, and I like talking about yarn any time ;-)

On Saturday, my husband and I went into the city, did some shopping, met a colleague of his, spent some time at the Alster, and then went to the Gateway of the World - the port of Hamburg. I brought a graffiti which I had made a long time ago and saved for a special place. This was it! After all, this was a pirate graffiti and the famous pirate Klaus Störtebeker was beheaded in the port of Hamburg, it just seemed to fit.

 

The thing is, Hamburg's football club FC St. Pauli has a skull and crossbones in their logo, and some people just can't tell the difference between football and pirates :-P When I installed the graffiti, there was a group of people coming past, and I heard them say something like "oh, a St. Pauli fan". I just ignored them, and thought of proper pirates, rum, and lots of treasure ;-)

Let's Do the Yarn Bomb Again!

I am relieved to say I have finally managed to go yarn bombing again. It's been too long, really, I had nearly forgotten how thrilling and how much fun yarn bombing was.

This is a fountain in the partly beautiful city of Erfurt, Germany. We spent our last weekend there, visiting with my sister-in-law. We had a great time craft store hopping, playing board games, and doing Etsy stuff :-) AND yarn bombing, of course ;-)

Need for more Yarn Bombs

Maybe some of you remember my first yarn bombing mission and the Dragonback graffiti I attached to a pole near our flat. Well, it's been up for about 9 months (I am surprised it's still there!) and it's more than weather-beaten. It has many holes and always slides down the pole - but someone seems to like it enough to regularly pull it up and somehow knot it together!



I have to admit, I am quite touched by that fact. But I think it's time for the graffiti to go, it's so holey and ugly. I hope to find the time to make a new graffiti for that pole soon, maybe an even brighter one, a larger one.
I am really surprised nobody has taken it down yet - there are people from public services who keep the little park in order, and I thought they'd throw it away.

Swapped Yarn Bomb

I gave a mushroom yarn bomb to Mademoiselle Chaos at our spinning event at the Unperfekthaus in Essen/Germany, and she has set it free :-) Interested? Lookee here!

I've been rather quiet on the yarn guerilla front, myself, but I really want to go bombing again soon!

Spinning Event in Essen/Germany

Next Saturday (17th of April), Twisted and I will be spinning, knitting and hopefully putting up knit graffities in Essen/Germany, along with Mademoiselle Chaos, Granny Weatherwax, Aud and Frau Wo aus Po. Everyone is welcome to visit, watch, participate and/or learn! We'll be at the Unperfekthaus, Room Nr. 304, and we'll be bringing spindles for beginners, too and it will be a wonderful day!


Am kommenden Samstag findet eine subversive Faserveranstaltung im Unperfekthaus in Essen statt. Wir spinnen, stricken, kardieren, bringen Garngraffities an und verbreiten gern Spinnviren an alle, die es lernen wollen ;-) . Mit dabei sind Mademoiselle Chaos, Granny Weatherwax, Aud, Frau Wo aus Po, FrauFledermaus und wir (Weird&Twisted ;-)), geplant haben wir alles im Spinnkult. Ein paar Handspindeln zum Ausprobieren werden vorhanden sein, Fasern ebenfalls. Wer Lust hat, zu spinnen, zu stricken, zu häkeln oder einfach nur zu gucken, ist herzlich eingeladen!

They did like the Mushroom!

Apparently, my parents-in-law needed a while to notice the mushroom - but they liked it very much and when we visited them today, my mother-in-law told her younger daughter (9 years old) to go and learn how to knit, so she would be able to make mushrooms as well *g*
(Later, we three had a lot of fun drawing a picture together - while I was responsible for a dragon, a U.F.O. and a cute green alien, my sister-in-law draw the gate to the underworld, which I liked a lot :-D)

More Yarn Graffiti

The past week has been pretty eventful, my husband and I went on some trips and I took some graffiti with me, of course ;-)

First, we went to Lake Chiemsee to visit my dad and his girlfriend and to see some friends, then we returned home for a few days of board games with my sister-in-law and then we went to a hotel in Mühlheim (a veeery small town at the river Moselle) for a few days, which was a wedding present we finally took the time to enjoy :-) On our way back home we decided to surprise the family and I was very pleased to be able to decorate the garden fence of my parents-in-law (without them seeing me do it, of course).




My first mushrooms, which I already knitted while we had our end-of-year vacation, are now graffiti, as you will see in some of the next photos.
I have since knitted two more (one pink and black, one red and white), but I still need to finish the pieces to hold them before they can become graffiti.




I fixed this mushroom to the back of a bench on the Herreninsel, an island in the Chiemsee we went to by boat. We had a wonderful day and the weather was fantastic: frosty and sunny. It was a good thing we went that day since the snow started melting the next day and it also rained heavily then. Time for board games :-)
Sadly, the only (?) café on the island was closed and the cake we bought at a temporary café tent wasn't too good, but we had a good time nonetheless.





I knitted this one while on the boat to the Herreninsel and at my dad's girlfriend's later that day. When we met some friends a couple of days later and went on a long walk near the lake, I jumped at the opportunity to fix it to something - and it even goes well with the colours of that telescope ;-)




I wonder whether my parents-in-law have discovered this yet. They were the ones to give me the yarn graffiti book (Yarn Bombing) for Christmas, without really knowing what it was about, so I thought they really needed to see some yarn graffiti at close range ;-)
When I fixed this to the fence, it was snowing and raining, really disgusting, but the snow looks nice on the mushroom, don't you think?

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know - it's not that new anymore, but I do wish you a wonderful 2010! :-)
Twisted and I have been quite busy on our little end-of-year vacation: we've knitted quite a few graffiti and put some of them up in the small town we were staying in. I really need to get the other photos, I have only one to show you right now. As you can see, we've also decided on a name for our small crew of two. We're currently thinking about a fanpage or group on facebook and a (very small) page with a bit about us; a link to the gallery or flickr group where we'll be posting our photos; and links to other yarn graffiti artists. But no rush, we're also back to work/studying and have to balance everything again.

Inspired by the book Yarn Bombing (already mentioned) I've come up with a pattern for mushrooms, which I've sewn/crocheted onto some tags. I will try to put them onto the back rest of a park bench - and show some photos, once I'm done.

Shifting Stash

I think it's quite fascinating that I can decrease the volume of my stash by spinning yarn from it - which doesn't need as much space as unspun wool or other materials ;-) It needs even less room when wound to balls (I had a bag full of skeins and after I wound them they took about three quarters of the bag).
Anyway, enough of strange thoughts. I just wanted to show a picture of the nine small skeins I spun yesterday, with the intent of knitting them into graffiti. They are roughly between 30 and 60 m each and I will have a lot of fun combining them and embellish some lonely lamp posts or some bleak landscape - although I have to watch which of the yarns I'll use for land art, since I really don't want to leave anything that won't decompose, such as angelina or metallic thread. Well, I'll have a few days to get creative, since Twisted, our husbands and I will be spending some quiet, lazy days together. I'm really looking forward to that :-)

Happy New Year to all of you!

Loving Graffiti

No, I haven't been out putting up more graffities, but I've been busy knitting two more and spinning some suitable yarn - eight mini skeins, to be precise, to take on our mini vacation, so I can knit all I want and put up some tags somewhere else ;-) I haven't managed to take photos of the yarns (it was dark long before I stopped spinning), but I can show you the two graffities, ready to be put up somewhere:


Now, we still need a name and some great labels, both TQ and I hope to be successful on both counts tomorrow :-)

(The pirate tag I might label in honour to Captain Jack Sparrow ;-))

Dragonback - my first yarn guerilla mission

It's been in my head for a while now, I've seen pictures of others doing it, I've read blog postings and I wanted to do it myself. What am I talking about?

YARN GRAFFITI!

At first I had a hard time getting ideas, so I postponed any action and just found the general idea very appealing. Then I got a smashing book for Christmas: Yarn Bombing by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain (our German readers will certainly enjoy this blog posting about the book), whose blog can be found here. It is full of ideas, pictures, interviews, instructions/guidelines, it's absolutely fantastic and inspiring. Suddenly, ideas started pouring and I couldn't wait to get home, grab some yarn and knitting needles and start doing it.

I wanted to start with something simple and I wanted to start close to home. I decided on a stylized dragon because the idea was suddenly there and I planned to decorate the public park behind our flat. So, when my sisters in law sat down to read the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the older one, 28, reading to her younger sister, 9), I saw my chance to both knit graffiti and listen to a good story (normally I listen to Jim Dale reading it to me, thanks to my father who gave me the whole audio book series for my last birthday). When we had to leave for the restaurant I took my knitting and made good progress while sitting in the tram, while waiting for dinner and while standing outside waiting for the tram back home, which was slightly uncomfortable/freezing. When we got home I crocheted the spikes and then around midnight my husband and I went outside - I to sew the tag onto a lamp post, he to document it for you ;-) (He did get a tripod for Christmas, so he kind of jumped at the chance).



I know some people think it's about letting go - you should walk away from your graffiti and never look back, but I like the idea of walking past my first one whenever I need to go into town or somewhere else the tram can take me. I'll try to be less sentimental with the next ones ;-) I am curious how long it will last, though - and whether my favourite neighbour will ask me if I did it, since she knows about my spinning and knitting.

(By the way: my hand/wrist warmers are new, too - I hope to take a better picture of them soon)