Re-Crafting Education

A MONSTER AND MATH AMONG US!

Yay!  I accomplished my first yarn bomb project.  I successfully bombed a tree on campus without much notice.  Good thing my dogs were good decoys. 

I’ve read that there are two ways to yarn bomb.  One is to know what you are going to tag and do the measuring beforehand and the other is to make something and find the right size object to tag.  Since I wasn’t really sure where to begin, I chose to sit and knit and picture where I would like to place my finished project.

While creating this piece, I was also learning a new stitch, which involves creating fast increases and fast decreases to form a bubble on the surface of the knitting.  I wanted to space these out in a pattern, so I had to count my stiches and do the math to figure out where I would place them.  I wanted them to be offset, so I had to do the math there too in order to have the bubbles scattered across my sample equally.

I also wanted to place three monster claws on the bottom of my swatch, which required dividing my stitch count by 3 in order to equally space my them.

Once completed, I measured my swatch lying on a flat surface.  It was approximately 11”.  I had read that a good tag fits snuggly on the object in order to not flop and drop and sit securely.  As I was walking to campus, I stopped when I noticed a small tree I thought might be a good fit.  I measured the base of the trunk and it was just over 12”.   I then wrapped my sample around the trunk and it was a perfect fit – snug enough to stretch and grab tightly.

Feeling a bit more confident that I knew what I was doing, I walked on campus to the edge of the woods seeking a similar size tree trunk, visible from the walking path but also “hidden” enough that I could easily complete my tag in broad daylight.

Nervously I bent over and began to whip stitch the ends together using the long tail from the top and the bottom.  (I had left enough yarn at the beginning and the end of my swatch, having done the math to know how much yarn would be needed to sew my swatch to the tree.)  I had just enough to secure the sample, stretched just enough to fit tightly around the tree trunk.

Hooray!  The math prep enabled me to create an interesting and successful tag.  Now on to my next tag.  Stay tuned.