Yarn Bombing – What Bombing?

Yes, you read it right. I said yarn bombing. I’m guessing a handful of people have heard of this, most not.

Here’s my story…and I’m sticking to it. My wife Joan and I were recently in Colorado. Having never been in that part of Colorado before, we decided to drive over 12,096 feet through Independence Pass on Colorado highway 82 from the Leadville/Buena Vista east side of the Rockies over to Aspen, Colorado. It was a great drive. We were getting close to Aspen and, as the name implies, the highway there is just engulfed in Aspen trees. A sea of white trunks and green leaves. We came around one of the zillion corners on that road and a bright red splash of color caught our eye. It was something wrapped on the trunk of a tree, but we couldn’t identify it at 35 mph. A second later, we spotted a grove of trees at a pullout dotted with splashes of color. By now, we had slowed down and noticed a woman fastening what looked like afghans or cloth to a trunk. We freaked a bit and kept driving, not knowing what all this could be about. Cold tree trunks? Naw, it was near 70 degrees out. Whether they were actually cold or not, they sure did look cool.

On the drive back, I was determined to stop and figure out this mystery, or at least photograph the phenomenon. As we pulled in, the woman was still there. I asked her, “So what’s up with this?” She replied, “Wanna buy an afghan?”…Well no, she actually didn’t. Rather she said, “This is ‘Yarn Bombing.’”   She proceeded to tell me the story of how she was sick of seeing all these great aspen trees with life-long graffiti carved in them. So she decided to do her own version of graffiti and cover them up. She also mentioned that it has been a form of non-permanent graffiti that is more like art and covers up the blight of real graffiti.

Wikipedia says:

“Yarn bombing examples have been recorded as early as May 2004 in Den Helder, Netherlands. One year later in the U.S., Texas knitters used their leftover and unfinished knitting projects, but it has since spread worldwide with custom pieces being created by artists.”

I must say, quite interesting!

I sure enjoyed shooting the photos and I hope you have enjoyed looking at them!