Integrate Arts Festival 2013

A friend of mine had told me about an art festival that was gaining momentum in Victoria. I decided to go out for auditions as it were, and show the organizing committee my work.

                                     (My work for the committee that I showed at our meeting)

I went with coral, because it's the west coast (do we have coral??) and because it looks cool to see urban objects (like bike racks and electrical boxes) covered in fluffy brightly coulored coral.

I was approved and I decided to do two yarn bombs. One set up before the event and the other, a live installation.

We'll, the installation of the before hand one went well.

here are some pictures of it on the electrical power maintenance box.



Don't worry, it's all safe. I didn't cover important parts of the box.



But sadly, the piece didn't even make it the whole event. I would have thought Integrates Arts Festival would have put more effort into maintaining it for the duration of the event, but sadly they did not.

The live installation was worse.


(Tiny Finn from Adventure time! I was trying to make more characters, but I got distracted with coral for the other piece)

It started raining as I was putting it up, so that impacted who would come, but worse, the festival organizers were supposed to bring the tour people around when I started and they never came. It was super disappointing.



All in all, I wouldn't do the festival again. For how much energy I put in I didn't feel respected or a part of the festival at all.
In fact, I felt really used.

But I did do a really cool coral reef piece, my largest installation of coral yet! So that's something to be proud of!

Fibrations 2013

Wow. It is hard to believe that this festival has been going on for three years. Each year it gets bigger and bigger.
Although this year, while I saved up money to participate in the raffle, there wasn't really anything I wanted. Some vendors (while there were many new ones) weren't around this year.
The good news was that my friend Danika got to come with me this year.
You may remember the first year at Fibrations and last years.

So as you know, I have been SUPER busy working on my pieces for the Integrate Arts Festival happening this Friday. This meant that I didn't really have the time to work on anything for Fibrations. So I grabbed some spare swatches that I had been given and used that as an impromptu yarn bomb.

This lovely swatch was created by the lovely Dela, and placed on this lovely tree by me.

In the background of this one (this is all at St.Ann's Acedemy in Victoria BC), you can see this wonderful stone castle battleship thing that is simply imagination fuel. I enjoy it when ever I visit the acedemy.

I love Fibrations. No where else can you see so many people into yarn and fiber crafts. Makes me want to be more apart of the yarn community.

Some more ketchup

Hello!

I must say, I have spent this summer doing summer things and not really yarn bombing.
I have also spent my summer preparing for an arts festival that is happening at the end of summer. Now there are 9 days left until said art festival and I am mildly panicking, but that's for later.

For now, I wanted to mention a few catch up things.
Remember the spider yarn bomb? Back on November 4th, 2011, I put that spider in a tree. It's still there! I walk past it most days. It is definitely not looking so good, but I'm not sure I could get it out of the tree right now if I wanted. Either way, it's nice to know that yarn bomb lasted.

Remember the camo pole yarn bomb? in August of 2011, I put this camo sleeve on a pole in beacon hill park. And it is still there! The thing that gets me about this one is that it really is in plain view. You can see it form the park, and the street and it should be really obvious, but no one has noticed it. At one point, the pole even had a flyer attached to it, and yet when the flyer came down, the camo wrap did not. The colors have changed slightly, leaked away to being kind of pastel. I'll try to remember to take some pictures if I go past it again to get tacos.

Also, here are some small fun little yarnbombs that I have done in the last couple months.

they're not really anything big. Just some left over string type deals xD

BIG NEWS! I was featured as a top yarn bombing on MSN's living page thingy. Here let me link to it rather than try to explain. Anyway, my 2012 IYBD bomb is listed as being one of 25 brilliant yarn bombing ideas. That means a lot to me since I didn't think it was too strongly received when I first did it. But now it's getting crazy acclaim so I feel really good about that. Check it out, and the other yarn bombs if you get the chance.

Lastly, on August 23rd and 24th, I will be participating in the Integrates Art Festival in Victoria BC. Come down town to Broad street to see some of my amazing yarn bombs in live action! This is the biggest thing I have been apart of yet, and really hop it invites me to new artistic opportunities. I hope to see you there!

Cheers!

Happy International Yarnbombing Day 2013!

It's that time of year again.
For the 3rd year in a row, I have done IYBD!
The first year, it was a large collection of yarnbombs spread all over the city. I basically used all my scraps and unbombed pieces in one big go from my house to my work.

The second year I did that huge picnic set up, as well as a couple pole bombs and flower vines.
The picnic blanket and food spread all over the table took me like 8 months worth of work. It was probably my biggest yarnbomb to date.

This year, I was going for flare over size.
I wanted to do something fandom-y, as I really like a lot of fandoms and geeky things.

So I decided to go with Adventure Time.

If you're not familiar, it's a cartoon show. I would say for kids, as I do know kids who enjoy it, but it has an odd sense of humor and a kind of nostalgia that appeals to an older generation.

The base of the bomb is Lady Rainicorn.

Flying on her back as they soar above Ooo, are Princess Bubblegum,

Jake the Dog,

Finn the Human,

BeeMO,

And Marceline the Vampire Queen.

I put this up in the playground down the street from my house. It's close to the road too, so hopefully people see it.
I expect it to get mangled and taken home really quick tho. The amigurumi dolls of the characters are pretty detailed and not attached over well. I hope they end up in good homes in the end.

Well, this has been another fun IYBD. I didn't see as much hype (or really anything) about it this year, so hopefully others have done great projects too and I will see them today.

Have a great rest of your International Yarnbombing Day! I hope you go out and tag something!

Yarn boobing

Yesterday, I went to visit my friend Sarah Kramer , who you may remember from my previous posts with her.
Anyways, recently, she realized she had breast cancer, went through the whole process of a mastectomy and is now back at work.
I wanted to do something for her to show her that I appreciate her and value her. So I decided to yarn bomb her.

Or rather, yarn boob her :)
Those are the chocolate bars I decided to buy as well xD

I stuffed these 6 boobs into my hoodie and then unzipped my jacket to dump them all on her desk.

Here's Fergus enjoying a boob!
She smiled so much and was so excited by them!

She seems to be doing really good and it was super nice to see her after almost a month of not seeing her. Plus boobs, am I right? Even if they are yarn xD

Uvic pole yarnbomb

This whole year at school, I have rode on the bus passed this naked pole. 

I think at one point, it indicated something about people crossing the 4 lanes of traffic there. A similar one is on the other side on the road, but it at least has a sign. This one was bare and naked.

So I began to plot a pole covering. Then I got terribly distracted by school. The pole still bothered me, but I needed some kind of motivation to go and get it covered.

I started hanging out with a friend of mine on campus, and she finally gave me the incentive to go and get the pole covered.

On Thursday, we headed out in the beautiful sunshine to yarnbomb. It was like the weather wanted the pole covered too. So nice, warm and sunny.

Here's it beautifully covered.

If you look in the background of this one, you can see a deer! It was grazing near the pole as we approached, but ran off as we came over.

I had a lot of fun building this one. All the scrap pieces from this one are from my friend Dela. She dropped off a bunch of scrap yarn and swatches recently. It's like x-mas when she visits. So thank you Dela for making this piece possible.

I just love yarn bombing. 

I made an Infographic about Yarn Bombing!

My Experience as a Yarn Bomber | Create infographics

I made this infograph at infogr.am
I thought seeing how much I had accomplished in a certain amount of time would be really interesting to see. And it was! It was also fun to go back through my blog and count all the yarn bombs. I had to estimate, as some of the yarn bombs I have done I have not photographed and others come in multiple parts, so do you count them individually or as a whole? Not to mention, some of the yarn bombs I have done count only as one, but they were months and months of hard work and hours spent on them.

So really, this graphic doesn't tell you a lot. Then again, that's what this blog is for tho; to tell you about all the yarn bombs this graph sums up in numbers with pictures and words.
I hope this interested you, and maybe you'll wanna go back and look at all my yarnbombs too.

Monkey Mascot Mostly Made

It may not look like it yet, but this weird flat looking thing will soon be a monkey!
I have spent all of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week so far working on my monkey mascot. I haven't had a chance to stuff him yet, but once I do, he will accompany me through the rest of my Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. Tomorrow me and my monkey will work on our infograph. I think I will try to do one about yarnbombing.

I decided to make the monkey mascot in the colors that Eskimimi has in the pictures of the different houses. I saw them as Blue(ish), white and yellow. So I tried to incorporate that into the theme of making my mascot.

Once Knitting and Crochet Blog Week is over, I will yarn bomb my mascot friend somewhere where he will be enjoyed by people. Perhaps that can be my extra credit assignment.

I hope you all enjoy my attempt at a monkey mascot.

Welcome to crochet and knitting blog week 2013!

Hello everybody and welcome to an exciting time of year.
If you are just tuning in now, we are in the middle of exciting times. Right now, crochet and knitters alike are dawning woolly hats and deciding what yarning House they will belong to.
That's right folks, ripped straight from the pages of Harry Potter is a wonderful idea about 4 Houses to group like minded yarn artists.

The 4 houses to chose from are Bee, Manatee, Monkey and Peacock.
And I... -drum roll please- Am House Monkey!

The House of Monkey: Intelligent and with a fun loving side, Monkeys like to be challenged with every project presenting them with something new and interesting.


I like to think this is me. While I may not always be working on a project you can bet when I am that it will involve new techniques or sheer creativity. I don't like following a pattern. I like looking at something and thinking, can I make that? And then trying! For me yarn craft is about exploration and experimentation. And above all, art. I just want my yarn bombs out there in the world making people happy.


Also like a monkey, I often have to climb or move to unusual places to put my yarnbombs in exciting places. Recently, I had a friend climb a tree for me to place a yarn bomb. I think that;s something I would like to see myself doing in the future, although it is very nice to have help.


I think if monkeys could knit or crochet, they would want to do yarn bombing too.

Well, that's it for today! I hope you enjoyed and will tune in tomorrow for more exciting news from Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2013!

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2013

Hey guess what?

The 4th annual Knitting and Crochet blog week is happening soon! April 22nd to the 28th to be exact. 7 days of awesome crochet fun times awaits!

I will just be done school then. So while I will only have a little while to think about what I want to do, I will at least have the time to get the week done.

Anyway, it is something to look forward too. I hope you come back to see what I do for...!

Finn up a Tree

What time is it?!
It's Adventure Time!
Yes, that popular children's (what? Children's show? Have you seen it? I cannot believe it is a children's show) show has wormed its way into my heart.
When I realized I could draw Adventure Time character, I was thrilled.
But when I realized I could crochet them, I nearly died.

I've made a few Adventure time amigurumi's, but this is the first one I've bombed.

It's Finn! He's up a tree (like the strange 4th episode of season 5).

He's located at a local playground. I tried to put him just out of reach so his life span might be longer, but mostly I think he'll go home with some nice child.

I cannot wait to bomb the rest of the characters I have made.

Funny side note, I have had to re-make Jake the Dog three times. The first time, friends of mine came over, and they thought that this one kid in their class (they teach grade school) would absolutely love it. So I let them have it and they gave it to him for Valentines day. Let's just say his grin was from ear to ear. The second one, another friend came over. This one however, didn't even know what Adventure Time was, but liked the "funny little dog", so I let him have it. And today, I finished making another one.

So you have something to look forward to! Especially if you are both a yarnbombing and Adventure time fan!

Portland yarn bomb!

For the New Year, my gf and I went to the most amazing book store in Portland Oregon.

It`s called Powell's books. We both got tons of books and I got fridge magnets too.

In celebration of this awesome trip and the amazing book store, I decided to do an impromptu yarn bomb on a bike rack across the street from Powell's books.

It wasn't anything much, but surprisingly I didn't have anything prepared to yarn bomb.
I've become such a slacker.
But I am in the middle of working on a really involved yarn bomb dedicated to my new favorite thing, so look forward to that.
Cheers.