This book explores the use of handmade crafts as a vehicle for protest. Craftivism has experienced a resurgence in recent years, often in direct response to the social, environment and political concerns of those who engage in the practice. Acts of craftivism raise important questions for criminologists about the use of public space, power, and resistance. McGovern focuses on an example of the ‘craftivist’ movement that has been steadily gaining momentum since the early to mid-2000s: yarn bombing. As an urban craft movement that melds the skills of knitting or crochet with the act of graffiti, yarn bombing has the potential to contribute to criminological understandings of graffiti and street art, particularly on issues of gender, perceptions of and motivations for graffiti, and the commodification of crime. Drawing on interviews with yarn bombers and craftivists, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing explores how such acts can be understood and explored through a criminological lens, and will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including criminology, sociology, cultural studies, gender studies, and urban studies.

When Yarn Bombing was first published in 2009, the idea that knitted and crocheted objects could be used as a political act of resistance was brand new. Ten years and thousands of pink "pussy" hats later, the art of knit and crochet graffiti has entered the public zeitgeist - a cultural phenomenon that shows no sign of slowing down. Yarn bombing is an international guerrilla movement that started underground and is now embraced by crochet and knitting artists of all ages, nationalities, and genders. Its practitioners create stunning works of art out of yarn, then "donate" them to public spaces as part of a covert plan for world yarn domination, or fashion them into personal political statements. Yarn Bombing the book is a wildly colorful guide to covert textile street art around the world; it also includes over 20 amazing patterns, provides tips on how to be as stealthy as a ninja, demonstrates how to orchestrate a large-scale textile project, and offers revealing information necessary to design your own yarn graffiti tags. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by the authors and a new chapter that includes many infamous examples of yarn bombing over the past ten years. Subversive and beguiling, this new edition of Yarn Bombing demonstrates that the phenomenon of knit and crochet graffiti is more relevant than ever, especially in these troubled times.

Craftivism is a worldwide movement that operates at the intersection where craft and activism meet; Craftivism the book is full of inspiration for crafters who want to create works that add to the greater good. With interviews and profiles of craftivists who are changing the world with their art, and through examples that range from community embroidery projects, stitching in prisons, revolutionary ceramics, AIDS activism, yarn bombing, and crafts that facilitate personal growth, Craftivism provides imaginative examples of how crafters can be creative and altruistic at the same time. Artists profiled in the book are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Asia, and their crafts include knitting, crocheting, sewing, textiles, pottery, and ceramics. There's the Brooklyn writer who creates large-scale site-specific knitted installations; the British woman who runs sewing and quilting workshops for community building and therapy; the Indonesian book maker and organizer of a DIY craft center; and the Oxford, England, cultural theorist and dress designer. A wonderful sense of optimism and possibility pervades the book: the inspiring notion that being crafty can really make the world a better place. Betsy Greer is a writer, crafter, researcher, and the author of Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal, Social and Political Change Stitch by Stitch. She also runs the blog craftivism.com and believes that creativity and positive activism can save not only the soul, but also the world.

This collection examines the ongoing shared struggles of diverse groups of women in Canada and beyond focusing on a diverse range of themes to explore the centrality of gender and feminist praxis in western and non-western contexts.

'This is mindful activism . . . thought-out, strategic and engaging' Guardian 'I love what Sarah does! It's quiet activism for everyone including introverts' Jon Ronson 'Sarah Corbett mixes an A-grade mind with astonishing creativity and emotional awareness' Lucy Siegle If we want a world that is beautiful, kind and fair, shouldn't our activism be beautiful, kind and fair? **Award-winning campaigner and founder of the global Craftivist Collective Sarah Corbett shows how to respond to injustice not with apathy or aggression, but with gentle, effective protest. This is a manifesto – for a more respectful and contemplative activism; for conversation and collaboration where too often these is division and conflict; for using craft to engage, empower and encourage us all to be the change we wish to see in the world. Sarah's craftivism has helped change laws and business policies as well as hearts and minds; here, with thoughtful principles and practical examples, she shows that quiet action can speak as powerfully as the loudest voice.

Hoopla, by the co-author of 2009's bestselling Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti, showcases those who take the craft of embroidery where it's never gone before, in an astonishing, full-color display of embroidered art. Hoopla rebels against the quaint and familiar embroidery motifs of flowers and swashes, and focuses instead on innovative stitch artists who specialize in unusual, guerrilla-style patterns such as a mythical jackalope and needlepoint nipple doilies; it demonstrates that modern embroidery artists are as sharp as the needles with which they work. Hoopla includes twenty-eight innovative embroidery patterns and profiles of contemporary embroidery artists, including Jenny Hart, author of Sublime Stitching; Rosa Martyn of the UK-based Craftivism Collective; Ray Materson, an ex-con who learned to stitch in prison; Sherry Lynn Wood of the Tattooed Baby Doll Project, which collaborated with female tattoo artists across the United States; Penny Nickels and Johnny Murder, the self-proclaimed Bonnie and Clyde of embroidery; and Alexandra Walters, a military wife who replicates military portraits and weapons in her stitching. Full-color throughout and bursting with history, technique, and sass, Hoopla will teach readers how to stitch a ransom note pillow, mean and dainty knuckle-tattoo church gloves; and create their own innovative embroidery projects. If you like anarchistic DIY craft and the idea of deviating from the rules, Hoopla will inspire you to wield a needle with flair! With a foreword by Betsy Greer.

Artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting.

Strange Material explores the relationship between handmade textiles and storytelling. Through text, the act of weaving a tale or dropping a thread takes on new meaning for those who previously have seen textiles—quilts, blankets, articles of clothing, and more—only as functional objects. This book showcases crafters who take storytelling off the page and into the mediums of batik, stitching, dyeing, fabric painting, knitting, crochet, and weaving, creating objects that bear their messages proudly, from personal memoir and cultural fables to pictorial histories and wearable fictions. Full-color throughout, the book includes chapters on various aspects of textile storytelling, from "Textiles of Protest, Politics, and Power" to "The Fabric of Remembrance"; it also includes specific projects, such as the well-known and profoundly moving Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, as well as poetry mittens, button blankets, and stitched travel diaries. Offbeat, poetic, and subversive, Strange Material will inspire readers to re-imagine the possibilities of creating through needle and fabric. Leanne Prain is the co-author (with Mandy Moore) of Yarn Bombing, now in its third printing, and the author of Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery. A professional graphic designer, Leanne holds degrees in creative writing, art history, and publishing.

The art of craft and activism presented with stories, instructions and beautiful photographs to inspire the resistance movement

Mindfulness in Knitting casts fresh light on this famously calming craft and reveals how the simple repetition of plain and purl can nurture wellbeing. Through personal anecdote and mindfulness exercises, this book explores how everyone can experience the joys of making and looks at the numerous benefits of taking up one of the simplest and most useful of crafts.