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yarndc.bsky.social
YarnDC ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿
@yarndc.bsky.social
43 followers 32 following 110 posts
#FreeDC - domestic arts ↔️ public message - guerilla knitters - craftivism - 'to understand how the primarily domestic activity of knitting became a preferred method of political activism, we must unspool the 🧶' --Andy Marlow
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yarndc.bsky.social
Amazing people digitized the world's largest community arts project, the AIDS Memorial Quilt! Searchable, or browse for beauty, memory, resonance. Zoom out for a pointilistic magnitude. (I chose a few squares, h/t @marisakabas.bsky.social.)

Silence = Death. #AIDSquilt #quilting

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Zoomed out image of the quilt as tiny abstracted dots and blocks of color. Begun in 1987 by a bereaved and angry mother, the quilt has grown to 50,000 panels, weighing 54 tons, with dedications to more than 110,000 individuals. Volunteer quilting workshops still taking place: https://www.aidsmemorial.org/volunteer-aids-quilt. A square block of 8 quilted rectangles in reds and blues and other bright colors, including many names ("David" is largest), a champagne pour, a Latin American flag (sorry, not sure which country), and a man in a checked shirt floating in clouds, a la Marc Chagall. Another square of eight. This one has a t-shirt + jeans outfit sewn into it, a cat in a tree from Laguna Beach, Christmas trees and cowboy boots, and several nods to Christian iconography and names (like Jehovah), titles, and a line from Genesis 22.
December 2, 2025 at 3:21 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Knitters know. Historians, too.
PLAY THE LONG GAME Flexible redistribution of energy + effort is how you prevent burnout. It's OK to scale up or down the time you invest in activist efforts as circumstances + capacity change --@badasscrossstitch.bsky.social "Let's Move the Needle" activism handbook
Photo of a hand holding the beginnings of a sweater, knitted in the round in moss stitch in a dark green chunky wool. Only the ribbed collar and upper shoulders are complete. In background, a couple of history books are visible.
December 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Thankful for…

🍂 the comforts of soft craft
🍂 socially conscious posters, memes + yarnbombs
🍂 @freedcproject.bsky.social, a caring community active for our rights, and
🍂 daily sightings of this nearby yb sent us by an anon. Encinitas stitcher (up for 3 days + counting!).

HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Cloudy sky. On a narrow city street median, buses and cars in lanes to either side, a corrugated iron (?) street-signpost bears a knitted vertical banner -- white "FREE DC" lettering stitched on red background -- pulled tight across + down the post.
November 27, 2025 at 12:21 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Hi👋🏾, M Street Southwest median: We Are Back

👀 This was 1 of 2 y'bombs made + sent to us 📫 📦 by a faraway person we have not (yet!) met. Love + gratitude to this Encinitas, Calif., knitter!

Will post your 💛❤️🖤creations, too. Mailing address in this pattern: drive.google.com/file/d/15ImI...
Nighttime photo of city street from median, bus and car traffic visible at right. At center is a corrugated iron street-sign post with a knitted vertical banner -- white "FREE DC" lettering stitched on red background -- pulled tight across the post. Reverse of the yarnbombed signpost showing the red yarn zigzag running down the post, holding the banner tight. Two verticle "FREE DC" yarnbombs on a white counter, white letters stitched on red. (These were in the package from Encinitas.)
November 25, 2025 at 1:39 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
stash pile — inspired by those colors
pile of yarn bits and balls in autumn colors reflecting art print in the post this replies to
November 19, 2025 at 2:03 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
"Billionaires Eat First" says this powerful @unrigoureconomy.bsky.social installation we saw on the nation's front lawn, the National Mall. (See the Washington Monument in the distance?)Their KidsGoHungry campaign tallies the millions SNAP serves in every U.S. state.

Only turkeys would cut it. 🦃
An orderly array of perhaps a hundred posterboard cut-outs planted across a grassy section of the National Mall, the sun setting over fall trees on the horizon line. Signboard at edge of the arrayed state signs reads: After cutting food assistance earlier this year… Trump & Republicans put 40,735,210 Americans at risk of hunger again. kidsgohungry.com The array seen at close range shows a sign in front reading, "In Nevada, 496,848 people rely on snap food assistance." The wording flanks an illustration of a cooked turkey in a pot. In the next row back, a similar sign can be seen for Mississippi (357,042) and farther back, Colorado, and so on. Six-foot signboard standing beside the installation illustrated with a smiling turkey in a top hat and tux with a monocle. It reads: "After Cutting Food Assistance Earlier This Year... TRUMP & REPUBLICANS PUT 41,735,210 AMERICANS AT RISK OF HUNGER. AGAIN.
November 18, 2025 at 12:16 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
How long can this bee-yoo-tee-ful Lincoln Park yarnbomb last? It's a Capitol Hill oasis loved by kids, families and people who like to sit on grass w/coffee + a book, so ofc the Trump admin polices the s**t out of it.

Hope cops + National Guard like the new decor. We sure do.

#yarnbomb #knitsky
Through decorative cast-iron fencing, a view of a grassy park with autumn color in trees at its edge. Strung on the fence is a yarnbomb -- a knitted green banner (like a large scarf or muffler) with the words "FREE DC" knitted into it in white.
November 17, 2025 at 2:34 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
The Onion is all over this.
@theonion.com
Photo of seated person, face unseen behind an open tabloid-fold print newspaper (it is "The Onion") held up by reader's hand at left. Entire back page covered in a mock ad showing a colorful abstract splash of ink on black background with Adobe logo at top left, across which a banner reads: EXPERIENCE THE MAGIC of buying new software, every month, forever.
November 16, 2025 at 3:37 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
🎸Saturday night's all right for ... yarnbombing. This one's in good company!

#yarnbombing #knitsky #FreeDC ❤️🤍💛🖤
November 9, 2025 at 1:06 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
Dupont Circle, ✋🏼. We love you!

#FreeDC #yarnbombing
We felt like celebs as a passing woman stopped to thank us and gush about this "Free DC" red-on-white yarn bomb. "I love these," she exulted. "My friend sent me a picture of one from her neighborhood, and now we're getting one here, too!!!" This y.b. is embroidered letters on crochet, incidentally. (Most of them are knitted.) Knitted yarnbomb with "FREE DC" in great FAT red letters on a white background, laced to a perforated parking signpost, tree in tree box and city sidewalk visible behind it. This one's horizontal, "FREE DC" knitted in red on white belting the thick trunk of a mature street tree (willow oak?), Florida Avenue seen in background.
November 9, 2025 at 12:56 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
This reminds us of Shetland knitters, whose lace "wedding ring shawls" Queen Victoria made famous. Using local yarn so delicate that a blanket-sized wrap could be pulled through a lady's ring, their labor was compensated in "truck" goods by middlemen who made bank exporting to luxury markets.
EXCERPT OF 2018 ARTICLE in the journal Cultural Geographies, by Joanna Mann, "Knitting the archive: Shetland lace and ecologies of skilled practice:" following a description of the 1831 Truck Act, requiring that artisans (like, in this case, knitters) be paid in currency rather than goods, it continues: "As J. Sands wrote in a newspaper publication, 'although a thousand infringements of the Act occur daily, there have only been three or four prosecutions'. The persistence of Truck ironically led to cases where knitters were starving but astonishingly well dressed in the latest fashions. Yet, with no alternative viable options, the women of Shetland continued to knit for fancy goods and tea, in a bid to survive. By 1840, then, knitting was first and foremost a skill generated by economic necessity. Knitting became a form of currency, for the more a woman could knit, the more she could offer for exchange. Indeed, the pressure of making was so great that often knitting would be compiled with other activities in order that every moment could be spent productively, hence why I came across so many photographs of women knitting while on the move."
November 9, 2025 at 12:41 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
'I think fiber arts are particularly political bc so many gender norms are tied to them and they are also pretty harmless. Knit things keep us warm + cozy, right? So it’s been a powerful way for me to share commentary on our political system in an art form that is accessible...'
#knitsky #yarnbomb
In a city sidewalk tree box, a yarn bomb by textile street artist Ellie d’Eustachio running about four feet up the trunk works flowers, birds, and a wide-mouthed gator into a fanciful arrangement with the embroidered message in a blue square, "you can fix broken things" and, at the bottom, "made by ..." the artist's name. FROM: https://www.jessieathome.com/meet-textile-street-artist-ellie-deustachio/
November 7, 2025 at 4:34 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
'In 2019 I was commuting home late nights and one deserted house really freaked me out when I walked by, so on a whim I knit a huge, smiling lion with flowers in its mane and sewed it to the house’s fence. So, every night when I walked home, I had protection." www.jessieathome.com/meet-textile...
On a chainlink fence on a rowhouse city block, remnants of snow visible in brown grass behind it, a reclining lion knitted in bright yellow yarn either roars or smiles, its eyes cast down over a wide open mouth, with little flowers in its orange mane. It is flanked by two cheerful red tulips on long green stems also hung on the fence.
November 7, 2025 at 4:25 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Oh, dear. 😭😹😭 Who's up to knit this lol?

<alt-text highly recommended>
screenshot of a tweet from the snarky (but real!) Gov. Newsom Press Office account showing a photo of a windowed White House entrance over which Donald Trump has plastered one of his tacky gold-painted Home Depot ornamental friezes and beside which, as if that wasn't horrible enough, someone had *taped up* LOL a label in large, gold, Edwardian script--printed on office paper + reminiscent of a post-it for an <ahem> dementia sufferer--reading "The Oval Office." Except in the Newsom photo, the gilded script, in true Home Goods remainder-table style, reads, "Live Laugh LOSE" LOLOL.
November 6, 2025 at 3:23 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Good morning only to people who voted Democrat or cheered them on — which is now most Americans, heh heh. #FreeDC #yarnbomb #knitsky #craftivism
“Free DC” knitted banner on chain link fence. Knitted red/white banners of various shapes on a table reading “Free DC” and “MAGA bites.” Colorful knitted banner reading “chinga la migra,” which is Spanish for “fuck ICE.” Yard-long red/white “Free DC” knitted banner draped across a shiny black public bench.
November 5, 2025 at 1:26 PM
yarndc.bsky.social
Hey, DC — ready for your makeover? 💅💇🏾‍♀️🪞

The new look is very #FreeDC yarnbomb. Trying it for size here near Kingman Park: Doesn’t it make us look more JOYFUL and POWERFUL?
Fall color, mature tree in grassy field, bikeshare docks in foreground. On chain-link fence edging the field, there is a red textile “FREE DC” sign, about a foot or two wide. Close-up of red and white, knitted or crocheted “FREE DC” sign on chain-link fence edging grass field streen with autumn leaves.
November 3, 2025 at 2:05 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
Out now, in the leafy wilds of Northwest DC, another new yarnbomb, and WE LOVE THIS SO MUCH 💝💝💝.

#FreeDC #yarnbomb #knitsky

Want to knit one and send to us? Mailing address in pattern: bit.ly/FDCyarnbomb
Near curb of leafy residential rowhouse block, tied to a metal pole with a pedestrian-crossing sign, is a “Free DC” yarnyy bomb — a knitted vertical banner in bold red-on-white lettering.
October 29, 2025 at 2:10 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
It's happppppppennnnning❣️❣️❣️

💃🏾Our pattern's DEBUT in the wild -- seen on Capitol Hill. ❤️💛🖤💛❤️ {Note considerate yarnbomber's attention to not blocking the trap door used to empty the bin.}

🧶You can yarnbomb, too! bit.ly/FDCyarnbomb

#FreeDC #knitting #yarnbomb @freedcproject.bsky.social
October 26, 2025 at 1:43 AM
yarndc.bsky.social
The people of DC are joyful and powerful, and we deserve the right to KNIT. (Also to crochet.) (Also to govern ourselves.)
Seeing a 📝pattern here? #FreeDC

🧶 To stitch your own, just start or click the link. Put them up yourself or mail to address provided. Post pics here!

bit.ly/FDCyarnbomb
A shiny black park bench on brick sidewalk is decorated with a long, red knitted banner running almost the full length of its back. On the banner are two horizontal white stripes (like DC flag) with the words "FREE DC" knitted in below them in a bold, fat font. 2 shiny black bike racks, upside-down "U" shape, each decorated with a bumper-sticker-sized red, knitted banners that have the words "FREE DC" loosely embroidered on them loosely tied to a sycamore trunk, a vertical white crocheted banner has the embroidered words "FREE DC" running downward in red yarn
October 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM