2020 has been a rough year, and I know a lot of us are hurting. So how about a story of love and yawn drowning out hate?

This is my LYS, Northwest Yarns in Bellingham. I love it SO MUCH. It's very welcoming and extremely LGBTQIA+ inclusive.

They always yarnbomb the tree out front. For a while, it was a TARDIS. But lately it's been a Pride flag.

In June, the flag was ripped down 3 times, stolen, returned, and finally slashed off the tree with such violence that the tree was damaged, and the flag shredded.

But these hateful people, whoever they were, didn't know what they were up against. Not just queer folks and allies, oh no.

They had pissed off KNITTERS. (And crocheters.)

Their hatred never stood a chance.

The community banded together. The store owner sat outside the shop every day with a knitting machine, and people helped knit new flags.

Some of us crocheted patches for the old flag. I contributed several squares myself.

We queered EVERY. TREE. ON. THE. BLOCK. Trans pride! Lesbian pride! Genderqueer pride! Enby pride! Bisexual pride! Flags for every tree! (I made special patches for the asexual and trans flags. The trans one is made with nålbinding and is functionally indestructible.)

The intersex flag was made by a local intersex child who is an advocate for intersex rights.

And the original flag? Oh, we didn't lose it. We patched it up with MORE QUEER COLORS (and a prominent BLM patch) and PUT IT RIGHT BACK UP. It's protest art now!

And none of the flags have been bothered since then. So that's how we queered up a block with yarn and defeated the haters!