Projects

News, Projects, Yarnbombs

Ride in a car we yarn bombed!

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Ride in a car we yarn bombed!

Washington, D.C. Lyft riders will see a new app option during the 2017 holiday season: Merry Mode. Tap it and a Lyft car in an ugly Christmas sweater that we helped crochet arrives complete with karaoke carols inside. Read more about it here. Lyft donates its share of each Merry Mode fare to local nonprofit Martha’s Table.

Lyft’s Merry Mode is live in Washington, D.C. at the following times:

  • 3 p.m. — midnight Thursday, Dec. 14
  • 3 p.m. — midnight Friday, Dec. 15
  • Noon — midnight Saturday, Dec. 16
  • Noon — 10 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17

Lyft Merry Mode yarnbombed cars Ishknits Knits for Life

Lyft Merry Mode yarnbombed cars Ishknits Knits for Life

 

News, Projects, Yarnbombs

Open Voting for Knitting the Commons

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Open Voting for Knitting the Commons

Throughout summer 2017 we’ll be knitting in the newly named Civic Center Commons in San Francisco, California. The Trust for Public Land is unveiling several new projects to make the three blocks it spans more lovable: Civic Center Plaza, Fulton Street, and UN Plaza. One of these projects is yarn bombing over 100 trees to visually connect the space with a tangible art installation that invites the community to connect with the space.

Knitting the Commons Knits for Life The Trust for Public Land

You can take part in a bunch of ways!

  • Lunchtime knitting machine demos: Come watch us demo the knitting machine we used to knit the commons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in June. Full schedule: June 13-14 on Fulton Street; June 20-21 in UN Plaza; June 27-28 in Civic Center Plaza.
  • Watch us install the first batch of yarn bombs throughout the Commons June 12-29, 11a-3p.
  • Design next batch of trees with us! The first batch literally knits the new Civic Center Commons logo colors through the trees to visually link the three plazas together. The second batch is up to you! Vote on 3 designs we’ve proposed or dream one up yourself.
  • Visit The Commons with your community group! If you haven’t been lately, there’s so much to see! Throughout the week there is so much else to see too: a pop-up playground, Off the Grid, farmer’s market, street market, Exploratorium pop-up exhibits, and cute tables and chairs with Tivoli lighting!

Knitting the Commons Knits for Life The Trust for Public Land

Be sure to tag us @KnitsForLife in your pics so we can enjoy them and use the hashtag #KnittingTheCommons.

xxxo,

Jill & Lorna

Knitting the Commons Knits for Life The Trust for Public Land

Projects

Filet Crochet Portraits

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Filet Crochet Portraits

Grief can be a slow, quiet, solitary process. Needle arts can be as well. Perhaps that’s why we’ve used crochet to process the recent loss of three beloved grandparents. First, Lorna created two Day of the Dead filet crochet banners to celebrate our maternal grandfather’s life and passing. Now, the two of us collaborated on a pair of filet crochet portraits in honor of our paternal grandparents, Robert and Catherine Watt. Both portraits are on view as part of the exhibit Thread Around Holes at The Lace Museum in Sunnyvale, California until October 31, 2015, after which they will be available for private viewings at Claremont Art Studios.

Filet Crochet Portraits by Jill and Lorna Watt

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Projects, Yarnbombs

Oakland Coliseum String Art Yarn Bomb

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Oakland Coliseum String Art Yarn Bomb

How do you engage 25,000 people in one day? That was Visit Oakland‘s dilemma for the Oakland Raiders 2015 season opener at the Oakland Coliseum. Visit Oakland reached out to us to design a concept for both sides of the pedestrian bridge between the Coliseum and the BART rail station. Our guidelines: use this string art installation as our inspiration, maximize longevity, use Oakland’s team colors, use shapes that reference Oakland, add hashtags, and cover 150 feet over just two days.

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Projects, Tutorials

Knit Pies for Pi Day 2015

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Knit Pies for Pi Day 2015

Knitters are nerds. Proof? Search nerd, geek, and math in Ravelry’s groups and find tons of chums hanging in places like GeekCraft, Geek Swap, and Botanica Mathematica. Needle crafters prove the old adage: if it exists, it’s been knit. So what knitter could let a once-in-a-century event like Pi Day 2015 pass them by? Pi Day 2015 is when the date and time 3/14/15 at 9:26 and 53 seconds lines up with the mathematical constant and irrational number of Life of Pi fame, 3.141592653…

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Projects

Repurposed Old Navy Yarnbomb

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Repurposed Old Navy Yarnbomb

If yarnbombing is a waste of time and materials, then why don’t aerosol artists get flack for not touching up house paint jobs instead of painting street walls? Because art. True, yarnbombing is more temporary and removable. But even Scotch Guarded yarnbombs don’t seem clean after a good wash and dry. Unless they’ve been indoors. And that’s just where our Old Navy truck yarnbomb was all through the holiday season. So when the Old Navy team asked us to repurpose the yarnbomb into memorabilia for the office, we put every usable scrap to work. (more…)

Projects

Another Window Display Made Entirely of Yarn

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Another Window Display Made Entirely of Yarn

As soon as we met Sonia who owns the hip local yarn shop Stash earlier this year at VK Live Seattle, we knew we’d be taking over the world together. Our first challenge, dream up a window display made entirely of yarn to show off one of their products, Simplicity HiKoo, a luscious soft DK-weight merino/acrylic/nylon blend from Skacel.

Immediately our imaginations conjured a breezy Pacific Northwest fiber wonderland where alpacas and blackface sheep frolicked over every hill. What a surprise when few miles out of town on our drive up, the stately Cascades turned to rolling pastures of sheep with guard alpacas, just like our sketch!

Our jumbo crocheted alpacas and miniature flock of sheep bounded across the pasture and right into our hearts, so we had to share them with you. Both crochet patterns now await you as instant downloads in my pattern store. (more…)

Projects

Vogue Knitting Live Seattle Recap

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Vogue Knitting Live Seattle Recap

If you’ve never been to a Vogue Knitting Live show yet, put it on your bucket list! VK Live is full of fun classes from fixing moth holes to designing toys, and a marketplace of colors and textures to die for–plus real live bunnies! For last week’s west coast Seattle show, Jill and I partnered with Lion Brand Yarn for an epic new installation: an Octopuss knitting and crochet class. (more…)

Projects

Winter Olympics Knit & Crochet Window Display

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Winter Olympics Knit & Crochet Window Display

Jill and I recently started designing fiber-inspired window displays for our local yarn shop, Nine Rubies, in downtown San Mateo, California. Here is our previous knitted window display, with pom-pom Christmas tree and knit wrapping paper. Saloni, the shop owner, challenged us to a 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics window display to enliven the remainder of what little winter we get in California. As always, the challenge is to design an entirely knit window display–or at least entirely knit, crochet, and fiber-filled. Since you guys loved seeing our process in the Squid Tree post, I’ll show you a little here too. We love how it turned out! (more…)