One of these days Jill and I will learn to do small-scale.
But not this day! A Bay Area volunteer group commissioned us to yarnbomb their community health and fitness festival at a San Mateo elementary school, so we had to pull out the big guns for the kids. The festival had a bumping DJ, an obstacle course, healthy snacks, free blood pressure and cholesterol testing, tile painting for a school mural, and a free photo booth. It was so rad!
We helped celebrate healthy eating with a sneaky monkey in a wildly botanically incorrect banana tree.
Find all the gory construction details in my and Jill’s Ravelry projects. The trunk and leaves are machine knit on the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine. We tried out a new technique with the leaves: we sewed machine knit panels onto plastic fencing cut-outs, kind of like using craft plastic canvas, but less dense and thus lighter. It worked! Another favorite new material we used in our Winter Olympics-themed window and our Vogue Knitting Live Octopuss exhibit is fishing line. Sturdy, cheap, and transparent, it’s great for getting objects to strike a pose.
At Vogue Knitting Live Seattle we started hand knitting the bananas to pass the time, but 15 hours in, realized we should have crocheted them. It didn’t help that we improvised on the world’s most confusing knitting pattern. 
We learned our lesson for the giant monkey, which is crochet amigurumi style, and took me about 6-7 hours to make. Soon you can get into your own monkey business because I’m writing up the pattern in two sizes: small with yarn held single and large with it held double. Keep up with new pattern announcements via my newsletter.
To check this yarnbomb out in person, visit the Turnbull Learning Center on Indian Avenue in San Mateo. We hope it will last as long as the squid tree, which is going on 7 months now! The installation is inside the gates, but perfectly viewable from the outside.
Someone suggested we yarnbomb kids’ bedrooms, and we love the idea! What kind of fantastical creatures and shapes would you put in your kids’ rooms? Let us know in the comments!
xxxo,
Lorna
KNITS FOR LIFE 
Hah, very cool!
A cheeky monkey eating a banana from a botanically incorrect trees. Love it!
Glad you got my joke, Cleio! They’re quite a mash-up of palm trees, herbaceous leaves, and banana fruit, aren’t they!
It is amazing. As all your projects. I guess, yarn bombing is a reason to get a knitting machine.
It absolutely is! It pretty much enables you to make bigger things, but the fun shapes still require a lot of handiwork and creativity. Thanks for your comment!