Combat Knitting And Yarn Bombing

"Did you not...clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit."
Job 10:11,12


The Combat Knitters are Navy nurses and doctors in a Nato hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  Some are on guard duty with an M16 and a ball of yarn. Dealing with 18 hour workdays in a colorless terrain, some wearing their combat knitting patches: two knitting needles crossed like swords over an outline of Afghanistan. Their weapon against all this stress is their knitting. It gives them color, shows that there is progress and a mission can be completed. They have already finished squares that make an American flag. The soothing click of the needles over the unsettling gunfire...


Now on to yarn bombing, the last two pictures show yarn bombing at it's best. Yarn bombing is like graffiti, only instead of defacing a building or object with paint, they hang knitted objects. No property damaged. It has been getting quite popular. On June 11, an international yarn bombing day was declared on Facebook.  A horse statue given knitted leg warmers and a blanket, a tree trunk wearing a sleeve, a park bench covered with a pretty slipcover. And these pictures: a local bar, yarn bombed with over 100 knit hearts. The bar's business has gone through the roof.Yarn bombers like to refer to their work as art, and say it really beautifies a thing. You might call it the grandmother's graffiti!


"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made..."
Psalm 139:13


I took all these pictures from the newspaper.