illusion [Budapest, Hungary]

For my next knit graffiti I wanted to try something completely new: During my stay in the US I heard about a new way of knitting called illusion knitting. The basic idea in illusion knitting is that you see a pattern of stripes in two colors if you look at the knitted piece from above. But there is more to it. The hidden, „real“ pattern or picture of the knitting can only be discovered if you look at the knitting from the side in a certain angle.
Of course I had to try this knitting style immediately and it worked out quite well. As you can see on the picture below, I hid the word „illusion“.




My first plan was to wrap this knitting around a big tree or post horizontally, so that you can read the letters of the word while walking around the tree. Unfortunately, I found out that this didn't work as I had thought. The whole word was not readable at all. So I had to come up with another idea.

I decided to hang up the knitting vertically instead of horizontally, so that you can read the word while standing close under the knitting and looking up. Additionally I added a piece to it with an instruction what to do: COME CLOSE – LOOK UP.

I left the knitting in a nice place in the Jewish quarter in Budapest, next to a playground. I liked the lively and friendly streets there a lot, so I thought the people there might like my yarn bombing. Indeed, while tagging the knitting on at street lamp a bunch of kids surrounded us and spoke excitedly to us in Hungarian. Sadly, the only word which I could understand was „fire“ with which they were probably referring to the colors of the knitting.
After we were finished to fix the knitting at the lamp, we stayed some more minutes to take some pictures. A woman came to us, probably she noticed us taking pictures, and asked us ashtonished what this is and what the purpose of the knitting might be. For a second I thought about telling her, that I put it there, but then I decided not to. Instead, I just said that maybe this knitting is supposed to make the city a little bit more friendly and make people smile. And indeed, she admitted happily that it made her smile. This really made my day!
I showed her how she could read the hidden message and she was even more amazed. She called her small son and showed him the knitting and the hidden word and took pictures with her phone.
I found it so nice to witness a direct reaction to my yarn bombing and was even more happy to find out how positive the reaction was. Thank you for that so much! :-)

KNIT ART FOUND in Budapest

Amazing Budapest! Beautiful architecture, friendly people, and most of all - creative yarn bombers!

At a public place called Deák Téri we came across a photography exhibition trying to advertise the Hungarian army, but what suddenly caught my eye much more was a big and beautiful yarn bombing in between the pictures of war. What a perfect place for demonstrating love and warmth!
Small stripes dated this knit graffiti to 2012 and it looked indeed quite new.




My attention was drawn so much at this knitting that I first overlooked a second one right in the middle of the square. Following an interesting elderly lady with my eyes who inspected the knitting for quite a while and then walked to the second one (on the left side on the picture below), I discovered it. It had wonderful soft parts and lovely flowers.
After making pictures of that one, I turned around and discovered a next one right away. The most creative one as I have seen so far.
But there was even more to come! A fourth one surprised me as soon as I was finished with taking pictures of the others.
And as we left the square I came across another, smaller one. Not comparable with the other bombings at all, but still charming because of its beautiful simplicity.
What a happy welcome to this city! At that time I already felt very comfortable with planning to leave one of my own knittings illusion in this city as well.


A google search about these knittings brought information about the guerilla knitters responsible for this amazing work very quickly: A blog called vadjutka documents the process of tagging this place and states their "enthuisiasm to make our city lovelier and nicer". :-)
varrodoboz and urbanista, two other blogs, also write about this yarn bombing, but unfortunately only in Hungarian.

Today is..

.. INTERNATIONAL YARN BOMBING DAY!

Have a nice day being creative all around the world!
New discoveries and bombings will be posted here in the next few days as well :-)

See you soon!