Urban Knitting!

I have spent all of this morning looking at knitted graffiti! Starting out at mentalfloss's morning cup of links (at about 10:30am!) which pointed me to this article on deputy dog, I've followed endless other links, watched a few videos and browsed all sorts of galleries. I've assembled a few of my favourite photos (or at least those that worked well in a collage) into a funky image using pixlr, an online photo editor:
Left-hand side (from top to bottom):

I initially found the cute pink mouse on Yarnbombing, a Canadian knit-graffiti site. They link back to The Baltimore DIY Squad but when you read a bit closer (or maybe if you just actually read it at all) then it actually turns out the mouse is here on a Craftster forum. The post is quite interesting, suggesting that the presence of some graffiti (even as in this case, some harmless knitted stuff) attracts others. Although I'd never thought about this (or broken windows) before, it makes complete sense... except in the case of knitted graffiti attracting other, more regular, painted messages - that's weird.

This bench is the work of Micro-Fiber Militia, the Chicago Crochet Graffiti Artists. I spied a few other benches on the front page of their blog: this nice wintery blue one, this flowery one and this not-quite-so-exciting one; there's also a couple of benches currently displayed on knit sea: granny squares and stripy with flowers. I like the simplicity of the benches, I can see them being a nice easy way to brighten up people's days.

Included as one of the image sets on my starting article, this very funky mooring ring is by the Swedish group Masquerade. I love the colour that's involved in so many of these projects. Masquerade have a little map of Stockholm (pdf) showing the location of their projects which is really nice - I'm very unlikely ever to visit but if I did then I think I'd have to take a look. There's loads of other cool urban knitting projects on Masquerade's site: I like the contrast of the yarns in this one, and there's something about the fit of the design (particularly the colours) to the location in this one that pleases my eye.

Centre:

This statue is one of a selection graffitied on this Swedish guerilla knitting blog. It seems Sweden must be the place to go for knitting. Useful for this blog is a swedish/english translator (with some fantastically bizarre translations), unfortunately the title for this post doesn't translate, fortunately pictures are universal :o) I guess the title might reflect something of the statue's subject/location but I'm not cultured enough to actually know anything.

Right-hand side (from top to bottom):

Beware boobies on the aforementioned Swedish blog (not Masquerade, the one with the statues). You have to see the whole post to really appreciate this one, I love the pink ribbon but am not entirely sure about the knitted breasts.

"Tree Cozy"! By Carol Hummel. Shown beautifully in three images within my original starting article, this one isn't quite so guerilla as some of the others but is in fact the winning sculpture in a 2005 art competition. Visible in the US from 2005-2008 (which I guess maybe means it's been removed?) this is really quite pretty. Possibly a little too much work for your average graffiti artist though :o) There are loads more pictures of this tree on the website and I also found loads of variations on this theme (e.g. GRAKNITTI, the ones mentioned in this US article and the JafaGirls' KnitKnot Tree -- JafaGirls' site also includes free art Friday which sounds kinda cool). Carol's also done four other trees (a cozy in India; a rope-bound tree in India; and two 'cozy' palm trees: one and two) plus a selection of other sculptures, many of which include knitting, crochet or yarn in some way.

---

Whilst these images are perhaps a selection of my favourites, there are a whole host of really pretty things on the all the sites I've visited today.

• Other sites I couldn't link to from my collage that are also full of great urban knitting project include: this great lamppost - imagine a cross between Narnia and knitting - which is actually by Knitta, Please who were mentioned in the starting article but don't appear to be someone I've linked to anywhere in my post so far, Lacey Jane Roberts (you have to visit this site just to see how pink that fence really is), knitted landscape and the ladies fancywork society.
• Not urban knitting, but another great knit-related site I came across in my searching - 'What not to Crochet' - I actually think the balloon dog on this site is quite clever, not terribly useful I'll grant you, but it's no worse than any other crocheted toy animal surely? That said, I could never forgive the person who designed and made this bikini (and in grey as well - what were they thinking?) or this cat-hat (that's right up there with the bonsai kittens, but at least they were cute).
• Not knitting at all, project 365 is a photography project: one picture for each day in 2007. There's a Flikr gallery here and a blog here. I'd almost be tempted to try this one myself (2009 anyone?) but I know I'd forget!
• And finally... today's questionable content is also knittingy :) I wouldn't have known but Foo posted it in LuBBs talk whilst I was browsing all this excitement.