Saturday, November 6, 2010

Yarn Bombing for a good cause

Last night, my friend Lee and I took to the streets of downtown Quakertown and “tied one on” – actually, to be exact, we tied 41 on!  Scarves, that is, for our first annual (hopefully!) Project Chase The Chill event.   My husband drove us to town, and I teased him about being our “getaway driver”!  I quickly realized his ulterior motive:  he wanted to be there to watch over us and make sure we were okay.  I hadn’t even thought of this, but in hindsight, there we were:  2 woman roaming the streets of Quakertown in the dark armed  with nothing more lethal than a crochet hook and a large box of scarves!  It was nice to know he was keeping an eye on us – thanks honey!
In keeping with the whole spirit of Yarn Bombing, I decided to distribute our scarves under the cover of darkness and with stealthiest.  My vision was that people would come to town on Saturday and see that the “scarf fairies” had come in the night (you know, like Santa and the Tooth Fairy, to name a few)!   My partner in crime and I worked our way up Broad Street leaving scarves hanging on parking meters and railings, and it was so much fun!  It was REALLY fun!   There we were, skulking around in the dark like criminals – working as quickly as possible (it was COLD, brrr!).  My husband wasn’t the only one watching either – I could see people driving by  in their cars looking at us, and I could imagine them saying things like “what are they doing?”.    A few people found out firsthand what we were up to – one fella was walking by and saw the tag on the scarf inviting him to take it.  He did and exclaimed “My wife is going to love me when I give this to her!” Later,  I had no sooner tied the last scarf on a parking meter, when a car pulled up to the curb, and a woman jumped out, grabbed a scarf and drive off before I could even tell her to enjoy it!  Cool!
I drove through town this morning on my way to the shop, craning my neck looking all over (trying not to cause a traffic accident!) to see how many scarves were taken.  To my absolute astonishment, I couldn’t see any left!  This was confirmed to me later when a press photographer and several reporters showed up at the shop and asked me “where are all the scarves?”  They looked everywhere and couldn’t find a one!    Holy cats!  All 41 scarves were gone in less than 14 hours!   I had hoped that Project Chase The Chill would be a success, but this exceeded even my wildest dreams.  I’m uncharacteristically speechless!