Made On Earth — Bus Tag

Magda Sayeg likes to see knitting on everything. In fact, since 2005, the Austin-based artist and her group of urban knitters, Knitta Please, have gone on several covert midnight missions to knit cozies for car antennas, street sign poles, trees, scooter handlebars, and even a brick on the Great Wall of China.

So when the 35-year-old mother of three saw a broken-down bus that was being used as a ceramics studio in Mexico City, she just couldn’t resist. She had to cover it in knitting.

But something this large was going to take more than a few stealthy hours in the middle of the night, so before “tagging” the bus with yarn, Sayeg obtained permission with the help of a local art gallery, Elaboratorio.

Then, with a crew of six very dedicated knitters, it took four days and a “gazillion” skeins of yarn (she admits it was probably closer to 500) to complete the project.

The bus, which sits alongside a city park, has constant foot traffic, and Sayeg received heartfelt reactions from all kinds of strangers during the process. “I love when an old fellow comes up to the bus and smiles in a kind of way that makes you think he may not smile often,” she recalls.

“He reached out and touched the bus and then went on his merry way.”

When Sayeg isn’t stitching up city fixtures, she’s busy with her line of whimsical felted scarves, which she sells at her Houston clothing shop, Raye (rayehouston.com).

But if she could figure out a way, she’d like to focus on Knitta full time, maybe doing a few more large-scale projects. “It’s still really wonderful and satisfying to wrap a stop sign pole in knittedmaterial, but, I must say, it is breathtaking to wrap a city bus in it.”

>> More Knitted Art: knittaplease.com