knitting

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

Yarnbombs

Rooty the Stilt-Walking Carrot Yarnbomb

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Rooty the Stilt-Walking Carrot Yarnbomb

We love inspiring people to make the world a sillier place. Last week we saw so many monster benches and monster feet on Instagram that we decided it’s time to bring a fun, new transformative concept to life. To brainstorm, we headed to an auspicious place to get our gears spinning: the park directly adjacent to the home of the original Maker Faire: Bay Meadows Park. A new park in a windy spot, all the trees are young with support poles. At first glance, this could pose a problem to the imagination, without any grand shapes in which to envision giant squid and palm trees. Instead of being deterred we embraced those skinny little trios of poles dotting the field. Within minutes, one cute, leafy tree top in particular sparked our make-believe session with visions of vegetables traipsing across the field. A few measurements later, and off to the studio we went to bring him to life. As always, here we post a bit of our process to inform your own yarn bombs. You’ll notice we’ve begun documenting the process with Snapchat. Follow our story to see what we get up to and show us your work too! (more…)

Tutorials

How to Make Fabric Yarn All in One Piece

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How to Make Fabric Yarn All in One Piece

So you want to repurpose some old sheets or fabric remnants, but all you can find on Pinterest are tutorials on how to make T-shirt yarn. You want to make yarn with no knots from a flat sheet of fabric, not a tube of fabric from a T-shirt. (The methods differ critically.) We had the same problem: for a recent installation of jumbo knit flags, we needed an efficient way to cut nearly a mile of fabric into 20 miles of yarn to knit on jumbo 1-inch diameter needles. We were surprised to find no best method. So, we improved on other techniques to get this efficient, knot-free technique that produces one continuous strand from extra large sheets of fabric. Let’s get started!  (more…)

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…)

Yarnbombs

Yarnbomb at SF’s new Seed + Salt

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Yarnbomb at SF’s new Seed + Salt

Our yarnbombs tend to become rain dances. Ever since our first yarnbomb, it has rained on our installations. That first was to be expected, as it was December. But it continued with a freak September downpour in 2013 on the Squid Tree, and has continued ever since. Perhaps a less auspicious explanation exists, like that similarly to everyone else, we like to knit in fall and winter. But I’m sticking with rain dance. (In which case we should yarnbomb in California more often!)

And so we’ve been waiting to install this yarnbomb since Black Friday 2014, over five weeks of drought-piercing rain, and so are overjoyed to see it born. It was commissioned by the beautiful new grab-n-go vegan restaurant Seed + Salt in the Marina district of San Francisco. This place is stellar, you’ve got to go. It’s the brainchild of owner Mo Clancy and chef Ariel Nadelberg, with creative direction from Lauren Godfrey, who’s worked on SF all-stars Bar Tartine and Tacolicious. As one Instagrammer said, go for the yarn and stay for the food. (Try the beet burger!) (more…)

Yarnbombs

Old Navy Bumper Cars Yarnbomb

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Old Navy Bumper Cars Yarnbomb

You’ve seen our epic yarnbomb of a 1950’s Chevy truck in Old Navy‘s San Francisco Flagship store (up til January 2015). Now get ready for the second epic yarnbomb: three yarnbombed bumper cars in Old Navy’s New York 34th St Flagship store.

How awesome is Old Navy to choose yarnbombing to celebrate #OldNavyStyle in a season full of fashionable knitwear for the people! We were so stoked that they asked us to do this second project on the same block with the Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s our little Miracle on 34th Street. Forget Santa’s lap–go snuggle your derrier into one of these vintage babies this Christmas. (And I know you want to but sorry, they don’t move around.) Be sure to tag us in your pics (@knitsforlife @thedappertoad @oldnavy) so we can see you!

For those of you who are interested in learning to step up your work to more ambitious yarnbombing projects, get your scroll on and I’ll tell you a bit about our process. It’s basically three steps: design, construction, and installation. But first, the pics! (more…)