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.
string art
String Art Wall at SF’s new Seed + Salt
We love trying new things with yarn! How exciting when the new restaurant Seed + Salt in the San Francisco’s Marina district asked us to create a geometric string art wall for the dining room. (They also commissioned us to yarnbomb a tree out front, which we wrote about here.) The piece is 9 x 8 feet and took about a day to design and a couple full days to install. We planned this design on paper first, carefully mapping the main elements to exact measurements and sketching some repeating elements to draw from on site. After installing the main elements, we filled in with our sketched repeating elements to make sure the colors and shapes filled the space in a clean but dynamic balance. We used Caron Simply Soft yarn and about 1500 escutcheon pins hammered at careful one- and six-inch intervals. What a crazy load of nails to hammer! A beam level and scaffold are essential tools for a job of this scale and height–we were glad the construction crew loaned us theirs. (more…)
Two new yarn art installations
This past weekend, Jill of The Dapper Toad and I each installed a playful yarn installation at Downtown San Mateo’s annual Wine Walk. The energetic, inventive Downtown San Mateo Association colluded with the property owner of an empty storefront to convert it into a pop-up art gallery for the afternoon.
I tried an Aimee Diamond yarn installations I’ve admired for a while. I designed a reusable installation so it can pop-up again. But even better, I designed it to twist and move so I can discover what fascinating abstract geometric shapes emerge from string art. (more…)
A whirlwind first quarter for 2013
So much has been happening lately that I’m excited to tell you about!
I went on vacation to Manchester, England and left a yarnbomb at my favorite tea + cake shop. Anyone catch the Little Britain reference?
The people at Purl City Yarns in the Northern Quarter were absolutely lovely and had some nice English heritage yarns.
The clerk was wearing Berroco’s Beatnik sweater, which is now on my knitting list!
Next up was the city of lights, Paris–on Valentine’s Day, no less. Did you know about the growing trend to click a padlock onto the Pont des Arts? The bridges overflow with lovers’ tokens.
Of course I had to leave one in yarnbomb style–on Valentine’s Day evening with sparklers while the Eiffel Tower twinkled on the hour. Très romantique! (Obviously photography was not my focus at such a moment.)
One day in Paris I took a walking tour of some yarn shops and discovered a few beautiful ones: Le Bon Marché, L’OisiveThé, and a cute shop in a Marais courtyard.
Upon my reluctant return, I finished my iPhone yarnbomb and made the front page of my local paper! My sister over at The Dapper Toad made some wonderful photographs.
I realized I’ve never seen a yarnbomb in my city. Have you? Since I see them every day in The Yarnbomb Daily I forget how rare they are.
In Manchester I discovered a stellar string artist so tried my hand at it in my local park. I’m planning to do a big one on my wall next.
Guests are the only way my house gets clean, and this month I had two. Yarn organization plan, activate! I went from a pretty good storage plan to an amazing one! Grab a yarn winder and some pegboard and DIYODS (do it your own damn self). You can even knit or crochet from the skeins on the wall. I call it knitting like a boss.
All play and no work makes… well, no money! I wrapped up two unique custom projects that turned out just swimmingly: a fangirl hat based on the cheetah movie Duma and a replica of a vintage Christmas stocking. The stocking pattern dates all the way back to 1935. How cool to help keep a family tradition alive–and they want 4 more!
And speaking of products, chain scarves and lacey laptop sleeves are getting popular lately. I’m designing new products for spring, but it seems these will stay alive–in popping, new colors.
Phew, what a year so far!
xoxo
Lorna
KNITS FOR LIFE 
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