It Takes a Community to Bomb a Cherry Tree

Yesterday afternoon, I helped a cherry tree blossom early. Knitters, crocheters, authors, book-lovers, and other supporters of Joy Kogawa House gathered to festoon the bare backyard cherry tree with hundreds of hand-knitted and crocheted blossoms. The Sunday afternoon event and several knit-ins leading up to it (including one held at Vancouver City Hall) was organized to help draw attention to the heritage site and the Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program.

The house was the childhood home of Canadian author Joy Kogawa –until WW II, when the house was expropriated and the family  forced to move, along with other Japanese-Canadians, to an internment camp in the BC interior. Thanks to the rallying of community members and a national fund-raising campaign (2003-2006), the house is now owned by The Land Conservancy of BC, a non-profit land trust, and a writer-in-residence program is operated on the site, helping to connect authors with the local community and encourage an appreciation for Canadian writing (see the Joy Kogawa House website for more info).

Joy Kogawa mentions the house in her novels, “Obasan” and “Naomi’s Road“, while the cherry tree itself is the focus of Kogawa’s picture book, “Naomi’s Tree.”

As an appreciator of cherry blossoms, books, and yarn-bombing, I couldn’t resist participating in the blossom event and sharing some photos:

Blossoms were created at local knit-ins lead by knit graffiti artists Leanne Prain and Mandy Moore, and were also mailed in from other locations.

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Participants at Sunday’s event crocheted chains, knitted “bark,” and attached the knitted and crocheted blossoms to the chains while authors read from their works.

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Outside, others sewed “bark” around the tree’s trunk and tied blossom chains to the tree.

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Vancouver Firefighters attached blossoms to the highest branches.

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Overhead, an eagle soared.

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All in all, a beautiful day and a beautiful event.

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More photos of the event will be posted at Yarnbombing.com.

Blossoms will stay in place on the tree throughout the month of March, so if you’re in Vancouver, stop by 1450 West 64th Ave to have a look.

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(Hidden among the blossoms in the final photo are three that I knit, and there is also a glimpse of the “bark” I knitted for a very skinny branch in behind.)

Graffiti variety pack

It feels like ages since I last blogged and even longer since I posted any graffiti images, so I decided to share a few of my favourite graffiti discoveries over the past few months. I heard a rumour (maybe it was a Tweet) that stencil images of the original Spock had appeared at various locations along Vancouver’s Commerical Drive. So I went down to search them out about a week ago. I walked up and down the drive between First Ave and Venables (stopping for lunch at Cafe de Soleil, candy at Dutch Girl Chocolates, etc), but no sign of Spock. It wasn’t until I gave up and headed home that I finally spotted this one at the Commerical Drive entrance to the Broadway Sytrain station:

Another image from Commerical Drive (is the crow checking out what looks like a giant bug graffitied across the dumpsters?):

In April I was cutting through the parking lot at Georgia and Cambie (proposed site for a new Vancouver Art Gallery building) and came across this shopping cart (?) art:

I liked the colour against the torquoise wall. Unfortunately, the cart wasn’t there the last time I walked through the lot.

And finally, these last two images are of knitted graffiti that I stumbled upon on a visit to a Gabriola Island beach in March (my first live sighting of yarn bombing!):