Jessica Earley hosted a Craft Society Meeting at Urban ReThink, (625 E Central Blvd, Orlando), where she introduced participants to the elusive craft of Yarn Bombing. Yarn Bombing is a global urban phenomenon in which crafty people are covering urban blight with colorful knitting. It is a soft comfortable form of colorful creative graffiti. A hardcore group of four or five women and one man showed up to knit or crochet the pieces that would ultimately be used to encase the bike rack outside Urban ReThink. As Jessica said in her invite, “Come get your granny on.”
Each person knitted and/or crocheted individual granny squares, or rectangles and then those pieces would be sewn them all together to make one large collaborative piece to cover the earth with. She had a yarn bombing book which showed entire trees covered in a tight warm cozy. The guy was taught a way of knitting in which he simply looped the yarn around his fingers. The result was a loose knit square. Jessica had strips of fabric which were given to each participant so they knew the correct width for each knitted section.
With my sketch done, I went outside where Jessica was sewing the pieces together around the rack. There was a light drizzle which discouraged me from starting a second sketch. A couple had stopped to ask Jessica about what she was doing. He joked, “It would be hard for anyone to complain about what you are doing. Of course if you were feeding people, then you might get arrested.” Knitting is a slow process but by the time I decided to leave, at least a quarter of the bike rack had been converted into a colorful piece of urban art. Jessica will continue bombing in preparation for “The Corridor Project” which will be sweeping into various Orlando locations soon. Details to come…