Yarnbombing the SubZEROfestival

Yesterday was rad! The yarnbombing went off splendidly, so many sneaky stitchers came out and really impressed me with their enthusiasm and wild ideas. Josh Marcotte of Lost San Jose followed us around and shot amazing photos of the siege. He had about a dozen cameras of all types, including one that had 8 lenses to take a mini stop motion movie. I’m glad he was along, I once again didn’t take any photos! We got some of those balloons up really high, so hopefully they’ll stick around awhile. I think people are going to end up breaking their necks trying to get them down, but they’ll do it anyway. ;) I think we may try to completely cover al the rungs of a park bench sometime in the near future. Perhaps at Caesar De Chavez park…
I had a bit of a hot glue disaster as my car got so hot that it melted a lot of the glue on my cardboard house. Cherri let me run into Anno Domini and glue it back together. I’m sooo glad I brought my glue gun! People were lining up all night to stick their head in the house, so I guess they trusted me not to put something horrible in there. I put up some pictures of the house here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilrobot42/sets/72157624210090978/

I really wish I had thought of this earlier, Peter was saying I could have put a camera in the house to record peoples’ heads popping in and out, which would have been so funny! I’m looking forward to searching for pictures of people with their heads inside, a lot of people were snapping them. I even had some guy with a blue mohawk (and matching can of blue ribbon in one hand) manage to get his head inside. I’d really like to do this again but on a waaay grander scale (keeping the dollhouse sized scale intact, just making monster-big 8 story house amoebas).

But for now, I’m really happy to get back to oil painting. I’ve been so busy these past few months I haven’t been able to work on new paintings. I’m going to hack all of the shelving from the sketchbook show into sparkling new panels, hopefully next weekend. I’m hoping to completely rework my wall at KALEID in the next couple of months. I miss my oils so much! I even acquired some new colors second-hand recently and I’m really jazzed to start messing about with them.

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Ninja Beanie!

Today I made a beanie to wear (quite inappropriately) in June when I’m yarnbombing. It makes me look rather like a ninja! A very bright ninja. Randomly, I did an interview this morning with Kris Sanchez from NBC 11 about yarnbombing, I’m hoping I didn’t seem totally dorky…
So it occurred to me that perhaps at some point someone may want to make a knitted balloon too (or even help make them for the bombing this June) so I’ve pasted the pattern I made up below. It’s quite simple, if you can knit in the round it should be no problem for you! It’s pretty easy to dress up with stripes, or fun stitch patterns if you like that kind of thing (and I do). Today I popped the balloons out of the knitted balloons that had dried. They make a rather delightful pop, then little crunkling noises as the balloon begrudgingly peels away from the hardened glue on the knitting. I’ve finished 16 balloons so far (I would have finished one more, but I got distracted and made the ninja beanie today instead)!

Knitted Balloon
(let me know if you need any clarification)
I’m using bulky yarns mostly, size 10.5 dpn and 12″ circular needles

rnd 1 cast on 6 sts, divide onto 3 dpn.
join in a circle
rnd 2 increase every stitch all the way (you will have 12 sts)
rnd 3 k 1, inc 1 rep
rnd 4 k
rnd 5 k 2, inc 1 rep
rnd 6 k
rnd 7 k 3, inc 1 rep
rnd 8 k
continue in this manner to increase every other rnd, adding a k st before the inc until you have 8 sts before the inc.
K for 12 or so rnds

the decrease begins!
rnd 1 k 8, k 2 tog, rep
rnd 2 k
rnd 3 k 7, k 2 tog, rep
rnd 4 k
rnd 5 k 6, k 2 tog, rep
rnd 6 k
continue to decrease every other row in this manner, subtracting 1 k before the decrease until you have 12 sts
k 2 tog around
finish by cutting the yarn and running it through the remaining sts and knot.

Now you dip the knitted balloon in a mix of 1/2 water, 1/2 Elmer’s Glue. Then you insert a balloon into the bottom and blow it up (this is kind of the gross part) and hang to dry. Pop the balloon once dry. All done!

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Knitting Away

I’ve been working on a bunch of knitted balloons for my yarnbombing project this summer. I’m working on my 12th one right now. I’m dipping them in white glue to stiffen them for hanging. I want to try and make a ton more of them, maybe 50 or so. Depending, you know, on how much I get distracted by other stuffs… There is a facebook page for the SJ Yarnbombers now, http://www.facebook.com/sjyarnbombers
Yay sneaky knitting!
In other news, the painting for Snoopy on Ice at Great America is getting close to finished. I love how many awesome set pieces there are to pose with in a compleately cheesy way.

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