I don’t knit, but that hasn’t stopped me from lurking around the Etsy shop of a German merchant called DyeForYarn. The pun, though forced, is fitting. Just take a look at the macabre names bestowed on many of the colors.
It’s Really Dead, Dead Walnut Wood, Black Hole, Gray Which Must Not Be Named. (“OOAK” stands for “one of a kind.”)
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Yarn bombing: "The surreptitious or unauthorized placement of knitted objects on statues, posts, and other public structures." — Word Spy
Word Spy's earliest citation for yarn bombing (sometimes spelled yarnbombing) comes from the Ottawa Citizen, March 11, 2006:
There's a subversive group of knitters in Montrose, Texas, for example, calling themselves Knitta, that say they "yarn bomb" neighbourhoods with knitting graffiti — colourful knitted objects they leave in unexpected places — to help bring a warm, fuzzy feeling to their communities.
The Knitta group was started in 2005 by pseudonymous knitters AKrylik and PolyCotN; their first project was a doorknob cozy. Group members styled themeselves after rap artists and assumed names such as Knitorious N.I.T., SonOfAStitch, and P-Knitty. The practice spread throughout North America and the United Kingdom.
Some yarn bombers publish their work in blogs. KnittaPlease (motto: "We knit graffiti") is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to "nigga, please," street slang for "give me a break." Yarnbombing.com ("Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time") cast off the cloak of anonymity when its authors, Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain, published a book.
The bomb in yarn bombing is an older slang term from the lexicon of spray-can graffiti. To bomb (or hit) is to spray many surfaces in an area. A bomb can also be a spectacular failure (chiefly U.S.) or a spectacular success (chiefly U.K., but appropriated in U.S. slang as "the bomb").
Yarn bomb is just one of many -bomb compounds invented in recent years. See, for example, photobomb (to hijack a photo by suddenly entering the frame; watch video of Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidoube describing to TV host Jimmy Kimmel her photobombing of Jake Gyllenhaal); Google bomb (the practice of using anchor text to manipulate search engine results, often for malicious purposes); meat-bomb (a parachutist); and, in the world of product trademarks, Flowerbomb, a fragrance by Viktor & Rolf. See other bomb compounds and definitions at Double-Tongued Dictionary.
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Bus photo from Yarn Bombing.
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I don't knit or do anything else of a craftlike nature. (I used to sew my own clothes, but that was long ago.) Still, when my friend Síle Convery, who owns the delightful Knit-One-One studio in Berkeley, asked whether I'd mind accompanying her to a yarn store in San Francisco, I agreed without hesitation. I enjoy playing amateur anthropologist and checking out into other people's obsessions. Besides, I've discovered wonderful names in places outside my usual orbit: gun shops, jewelry-supply stores, bridal boutiques.
Artfibers did not disappoint. To enter the shop, we climbed a steep, narrow stairway that reminded me of the approach to a dance studio. Inside, balls and cones of beautifully colored and textured yarns were neatly displayed in wire baskets. Each yarn variety was labeled and--be still, my heart!--organized alphabetically, the better to appreciate the playful creativity of the names.
I just adore Big Bunz and Bitty Bunz. And I also appreciate that each yarn has a tag with a nicely written story that usually explains the name. "Nanook," for example, is "designed to simulate the fleece of an arctic animal."
Some of the other names I spotted: Tantra, Tasmania, Purr (soft as kitten fur), Tesla, Zoftig (nice and plump, naturally), Ricotta (creamy and thick), Babushka, Cheesecake, Triple Cheesecake, and Phos (a sparkly yarn).
I was told that the store's owner names all the yarns herself. She clearly has a gift for unexpected yet apt metaphors that cross sensory borders. Nicely named!
(The Artfibers website is likewise literate and stylishly executed. How can you not admire an About page titled "Coup de Foudre"?)
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