Guest Blog: Local Cannon Gets Cozy

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WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

When organizers from Kingston’s Skeleton Park Arts Festival asked local knitters and crocheters to add some woolly-goodness to the the park for this year’s festivities, June 22-26, 2016, I was delighted to jump in.

When we met to decide on which elements were going to be knitted and crocheted, I knew I wanted to transform the cannon that sits at the entrance of the park near Ordnance and Clergy streets.  As a local peace activist, resident of the neighbourhood and marathon crocheter–yarning the cannon was a win-Win-WIN!

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Why is there a cannon aimed down our neighbourhood street anyway?

Many hours of crocheting and trying on the covering (cheekily referred to as the “cannon condom” in its development) over the last two months, has led to the completely covered black cannon in white, decorated with blue flowers.

My intention was to add 100 blue flowers to commemorate the 100th anniversary of WW1, but I stopped at  71 when the deadline and crocheters’ cramp got the better of me.   So it now more appropriately stands as a remembrance of the 71st anniversary of the dropping of the first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

While many people call what I did to the cannon “Yarn-Bombing”, my peace-seeking self prefers to call the transformation of random objects with yarn as “Yarnffiti”.  If you are in Kingston, I hope you get a chance to check-it-out in person–it is lovely to snuggle up to or straddle *wink*, but act soon because Yarnffiti is temporary public art. It can be here today and gone tomorrow.

Hope to see many of you at the PeaceQuest and Hiroshima Day booth on Saturday June 25th at the Skeleton Park Arts Festival–we’ll be there from 10am-5pm.  You’ll be invited to join in making flags and banners for the Hiroshima Day Peace Lantern Ceremony on August 6th.

Peace to you friends,
Wendy Luella

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