Author Topic: Meet the bollards: Wood posts on Mustang Island get yarn bombed  (Read 545 times)

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Online Elderberry

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Houston Chronicle by Elizabeth Cernota Clark 3/14/2019

The bollards were boring. Sure, they were doing their job, but they needed a little whimsy, especially on bleak winter days at the Gulf Coast.

Diana Vondra, a crochet enthusiast and winter Texan, took action. After measuring a few bollards before heading home to Iowa in May 2016, she spent the summer designing fanciful caps for 30 of the wooden sentinels that guard beach traffic.

Today, more than 140 bollard caps liven up the beach-access road, January through March, on Mustang Island between Horace Caldwell Fishing Pier and the jetty just south of Port Aransas.

Inspiration, Vondra says, came from the anonymous yarn-bombers of a small town in southern France whose handiwork she saw on vacation. She turned a corner and there it was: every tree on the street decorated with a scarf along its trunk. “It was so beautiful; magical and delightful,” she said. “I thought it would be so much fun for Port A.”

With permission from Nueces County, she and her crew yarn-bombed — a street-art movement widely thought to have been started by Houston native Magda Sayeg in the mid-aughts — about 30 beach bollards that first year. Some caps are more elaborate than others, adorned with three-dimensional crocheted flowers and butterflies. Others are abstract patterns crafted from leftover yarn. Still others personify people and critters: a snowman and his wife with a tropical-style “grass skirt;” a fanciful bee and ladybug, an octopus, and the favorite of many — a Mardi Gras-themed cap accented with strands of sparkling beads.

“I work on these all the time I’m back in Iowa and do it on my own,” Vondra said. “My friends at home have no idea what I’m doing; they might not understand.” But her daughter and grandchildren understand, Vondra said, and her daughter has made a few, too. “We share that love of whimsy, and the grandkids love them.”

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/travel/destinations/article/Meet-the-bollards-wood-posts-on-Mustang-Island-13688730.php


Offline Sanguine

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Re: Meet the bollards: Wood posts on Mustang Island get yarn bombed
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2019, 01:04:06 am »
I love Port A!

Online Elderberry

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Re: Meet the bollards: Wood posts on Mustang Island get yarn bombed
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2019, 01:41:17 am »
I love all the wind blown oak trees.