Yarn bombs

A petulant woman claimed two chairs at Starbuck's today, leaving me nowhere to sit, so I had to take my hot chocolate outside . Had very uncharitable thoughts. Wished Tony Soprano had been around (just for a warning, nothing involving strangulation).

Sat on cold chair staring out at the street and noticed that a nearby utility pole had knitted sleeve covering about half of it. Multi-colored, a bit faded. What the hell? Finished the hot chocolate and walked to a nearby yarn store and asked what that was about. The clerk said I should google "yarn bombs," so I did.

It turns out to be about "guerrilla knitters," who are "changing the landscape one stitch at a time," cozying up the world, and it's an international movement. A woman named Magda Sayeg has actually knitted a yarn cover for an entire bus in Mexico City, including rosettes on the hubcaps. These last reminded me of butter cream flowers I've seen demo-ed on one of my very favorite educational TV shows, "Bake, Decorate, Celebrate," (Channel 60, 3:30 pm weekdays in the Bay Area; must be seen to be experienced, really).

I'm in the middle of putting together a quilt back for a very large quilt and I'm so bored I could scream. It's a fraction of the size of a bus. It might cover the windshield and the area down to the front bumper. There aren't enough interesting NPR programs in the world to keep me at knitting a cover the size of a bus or to make a quilt for a bus, or to transform any landscape in any way, except for my own personal bedroom. What ELSE do these people do while they're knitting something that size? Listen to the Oxford English Dictionary? Learn Finnish?

That said, there are some pictures online of smaller knitted accoutrements: a bikini for a female statue, hats and gloves for others. They're considered "non-permanent," and unlike graffitti, can be removed easily. Carry on, knitters.