Tag: Yarn bombing

Ragtag Tuesday: Thirsk goes yarn bombing

‘Yarn bombing is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fibre rather than paint or chalk. It is also called yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting, or graffiti knitting.’ Wikipedia

Thirsk has adopted yarn bombing in a big way.  It’s the town where I first came across it, at Remembrance tide two years ago.  St. Mary’s church was festooned – drowned almost – in a sea of poppies knitted by keen volunteers from miles around.  It was a arresting, beautiful, and had the effect they were seeking.  As we paused to look and admire, we did indeed remember the fallen of the two World Wars.

A display of knitted poppies by Thirsk Yarn Bombers at St Mary’s Church, Thirsk (Photo: Northern Echo)

This year, Thirsk asks us to remember the NHS (National Health Service), now 70 years old.  Various knitted offerings are clustered in the Market Square.  It’s witty, charming, and reminds us all how much almost every one of us is grateful for the NHS and all who work in it.

 

Today’s Ragtag Challenge is ‘Yarn’

Snapshot Saturday: Street art for pedestrians

Berlin is the home of street art and creative graffiti.  If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll already have glimpsed the East Side Gallery: though that is planned and curated.

Away from the city centre, street art is so much a part of Berlin life that walking tour companies vie with each other to show visitors the edgiest and grittiest current manifestations of this vibrant art form.  Even big companies climb on the band wagon.  Back in the early years of this century, Nike paid for this piece.

I didn’t realise this is a Nike advert. So that didn’t work then…..

Somehow, global companies making use of a movement powered from the bottom up seems slightly to be missing the point.

Using spray cans; re-purposed fire extinguishers; transfers from images shot in night clubs, applied to city walls then doused in glitter, street artists come out at dead of night to brighten up favourite haunts. Bands of graffiti artists have thousands of followers on YouTube.

You, like me, can simply be a curious pedestrian in the streets of Berlin. Can you spot the example of yarn bombing?

This is a response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: ‘Pedestrian’.