Southern comfort

Life took me to Asheville, North Carolina last week, and I found it a pretty nice place. Lots of street musicians, purple comedy buses (Lazoom, Lazoom!), pet dogs, excellent restaurants. H wanted to get up close and personal with the public drummers who form a massive circle in a downtown park on Fridays. I said, "Sure thing, let me know where and when to meet you afterwards," because even at a distance of a mile it sounded like a very bad migraine.

Peregrinating around the rest of the interesting downtown, however, I discovered a good deal of yarn bombing, which led me to a cheery LYS, Purl's Yarn Emporium. The shop's owner(s?) appears to be mildly obsessed with Sock Monkeys...or so it seems to an outsider.

This photo and the one below it convinced me, finally, that I need to get a wide-angle lens.

"Why did you change our destination?"  "I see yarn in your future." 

When I saw these monkeys and their conversation bubbles, I knew they had to be partners. Only in a committed longterm relationship would you find mates who spoke in such non sequiturs.

I strolled around Purl's, then betook myself to a gallery of stores called the Grove Arcade, where I accidentally discovered Asheville Homecrafts, another kind of LYS. Both it and Purl's Emporium have a decent selection of yarns, and notions. Purl's also has a really good selection of knitting and crochet books.

Felted sweater-bombed cat statue marks site of a street known as Cat Alley.

Not Knitting New England...

...rather, knitted whimsy outside the only LYS in Melk, Austria (population 5,000), where I was last week.

I once attended a lecture on images of knitting in art, in which the lecturer opined that yarn bombing is a form of graffiti. Sometimes it is, I suppose, especially when the yarn bombers choose particularly noisome shades of acrylic, like neon lime green or Day-Glo pink.

Bicycles are apparently objects ripe for yarn-bombing--cf. the photo on this blog, last spring, of a yarn-bombed bike in Charleston, South Carolina. Perhaps it's the odd angles of the frame in contrast to the roundedness of the wheels that offer so much opportunity to practitioners of this so-called graffiti. Actually, I think in these bicycle examples, "graffiti" is a misnomer. Yarn-bombed bikes provide eye-catching advertising for their charming yarn stores, sort of like the shop-signs of yore that featured images of a merchant's or artisan's specialty.

Zum Wildern Mann, Passau

Anyway, I went inside Melk's LYS, "Frau Wolle," and poked around, and felt very much at home.

The Yarnie Bomber

Yarn bombing has always seemed to me one of those LITS activities (Life Is Too Short), and besides, it usually looks unattractive. Why spend precious time knitting couvertures for inanimate objects (tea pots excepted), when you could be creating useful clothing for humans and pets? No one to knit for? (Ha!) Think: charitable giving.

Having prologued thus, I must confess:  I have become a Yarnie Bomber, and here is my story.

It all began last week when I discovered several ancient plastic bags in the back of a dusty closet, and the bags were filled with yarn. The yarn had belonged to my adorable mother-in-law, Gladys Jewel Thomas Ward (1903-2000), who apparently had used it to crochet afghans.

Most of the yarn was horrible to contemplate, although it admittedly had a certain vintage cachet.

I Googled this  "Lovely Ann Lofty Spun Yarn (75% rayon, 25% cotton) to see if I could discover its historical background, without luck. All I can say with certainty is that it's at least 30 years old, but probably older.

Along with this bilious green, was a partial skein of the same yarn in carnation pink. I held it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, and it was then that my Aha! moment occurred:  As this  yarn was not suitable for human consumption, I could use it to yarn bomb!

Thus has begun my yarn-bombing career.

I've selected the naked post of my rural mailbox as the yarn-bombing target. My approach will be serial--in other words, an accretive strategy. As time marches on, so will the coverage of the designated target. (Stay tuned for progress reports!)  I shall search my stash for every last skein of Unfit for Human Consumption Yarn (i.e. synthetics that have been given to me by well-intentioned non-knitters) and use them to ornament my mailbox--perhaps other landscape features, too.

In the same dusty bags I found several partial skeins of Red Heart, Rochelle, and Pomfret mothproof, "Tangle-Proof" 100% virgin wool worsted. (Some labels still have price tags:  97 cents a skein.)  Again, I estimate the age of this yarn to be somewhat ancient. What impressed me most was that the mothproofing had really worked! The yarn is in very good shape.

"Would you like me to knit you a scarf from this cache of your mother's yarn?" I asked H, as we sat gazing inanely at the Summer Olympics on NBC, he nursing a scotch, I knitting feverishly, as I usually do when my brain is on vacation.

"Whatever for?" he responded. "I don't need another scarf."

Lola says:  "Take time to smell the wildflowers!"