Yarnbomber Takes Brooklyn

Written May 2024.

When Ellie d’Eustachio was in high school, she launched a theater troupe. Not wanting the theater troupe to squabble over the money they brought in, they donated all the profits to a local food bank. They performed obscure plays, first at local restaurants, then at a small theater. Her goal? To “rage against the injustice of the high school musical experience.”

Now d’Eustachio is a community artist based in Brooklyn who runs the Brooklyn Yarnbomb Club. They ply their trade of plying yarn in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, knitting everything from a pink bird stapled to a fence in Parkside Plaza to an eight-foot-tall quilt representing a turtle displayed in the Flatbush Library.

D’Eustachio grew up in Tacoma Park, a small suburb of Washington DC. Her parents brought her to see plays at DC theaters at a young age. When she was 13, Ellie’s mom took her to see Romeo and Juliet at the Folger Theater. She didn’t grasp all of the plot, but recalled being mesmerized by the theatrical magic; the lighting, the actors, the music.

“I was just immersed for a couple of hours in this live experience,” d’Eustachio said. “That was absolutely fantastic.”

D’Eustachio wanted to be an actor. The theater company she created in high school performed at a local theater on the weeks between bigger regional productions. She learned that “if you don’t like what you have, you have to make it,” and resolved to move to New York for college in 2007.

The New York theater scene proved a challenge. Working off-Broadway as a costume designer and off-off-Broadway as a producer, she struggled to make rent.

Faced with New York’s famously high cost of living, d’Eustachio joined a farm share, which allowed her to pay around $5 weekly for groceries. The farm share grew into the community support network she needed. She would pick up a pregnant neighbor’s groceries for a few months. People would cat-sit for her when she needed it.

D’Eustachio’s connection to her community extended to local politics. Her father was involved in local politics before she was born. “We were raised with a mindset of like, ‘you need to be involved,’” d’Eustachio said.

A few years ago, an abandoned lot on her street became a site for illegal dumping after its owners left. D’Eustachio repeatedly called (or as her husband would say, “harassed”) the city to send someone to clean the lot.

“We’re both pretty into politics and what’s going on in our community, making our community a better place,” Brooklyn Yarnbomb Club co-founder Vannessa Raptopoulos said of d’Eustachio.

Her experience through the farm share ignited d’Eustachio’s passion for community art. In 2018, a team she was a part of put on an all-woman production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which they performed for free at a Flatbush public garden. Passersby on the street stopped to watch the performance, drawn in by the plot.

“They started taking sides and cheering during the battle scenes,” d’Eustachio said. “And it was just this moment of like, this is exactly what art is supposed to be.”

D’Eustachio “stumbled into” the art of yarnbombing over the past few years. She learned how to knit as a child and had a knack for knitting stuffed animals. Her great-grandmother was a knitter in England. D’Eustachio remembers feeling pressured to knit sweaters instead of stuffed animals, which she attributes to the sexist view that knitting should be utilitarian, not a form of artistic expression.

“It’s been, you know, discounted because it’s only been learned by being passed down from generation to generation,” d’Eustachio said. “It’s not learned at school; it’s not like a fine art that’s taught.”

Around 2018, d’Eustachio did a lot of babysitting that would last until the early morning hours. Walking home, she always passed the trash-filled abandoned lot on the corner. Inspired by some of the work she’d seen by artist London Kay, she knit a 4-foot-long grinning lion surrounded by flowers, which she sewed onto the fence in front of the lot. The lion stood out against the backdrop of encroaching vines as the lot became more overgrown.

In March 2020, she began stapling more yarn pieces to wood scaffolding around her neighborhood. Her father gave her his father’s staple gun, which helped her overcome her anxiety about pinning up the pieces.

“My dad gave me that staple gun and was like, ‘your grandfather would love that you were making street art in New York City,’” d’Eustachio said. “So that was like, if your dad thinks it’s fine that you’re putting up graffiti, it’s fine.”

D’Eustachio connected with Raptopoulos during the pandemic. Raptopoulos owns a gift store in Prospect Lefferts Gardens called Awesome Brooklyn. The two created the Brooklyn Yarnbomb Club in 2022, and the group, consisting of eight or nine regulars, meets every two weeks at Awesome Brooklyn.

“You know, sometimes we have wine, sometimes we have snacks,” Raptopoulos said. “We usually just kind of hang out.”

In March 2024, the club received a $1,000 grant from the Awesome Foundation. The money will allow them more flexibility with the colors of yarn the artists can choose from, and the ability to secure a second pair of scissors.

The group has a thoughtful process of deciding what and where to yarnbomb. They try to find places they have permission.

“We try to choose hyper-local spots,” d’Eustachio said. “We don’t take our artwork and put it outside of our neighborhood in Brooklyn, because it’s really about people seeing their art on their community walls.”

For d’Eustachio’s personal street art endeavors, the process usually starts by finding a wall, or scaffolding that looks decrepit or otherwise interesting. She took notice of the scaffolding that went up after an MTA bus hit a brownstone in her neighborhood. After a short clash with security guards outside the building, they allowed her to hang a giant pink squid on the scaffolding.

“I was like, ‘I’m stapling up a giant squid. Do you want me to stop?’

Because of her social media presence, d’Eustachio’s work spread beyond people who might pass it on the street. Today, she’s something of a local celebrity. People sometimes recognize her due to her distinctive style when she’s out stapling her knitwork.

Between her day job as an executive assistant, raising her one-year-old, and training her cat not to nip at her yarn pieces, D’Eustachio remains committed to creating public art. She spends around five hours a day knitting and hopes to put on a gallery show called Mostly Birds, including knit birds and a few other creatures with wings.