Delicate patterns of lace adorn the facades of buildings, magnified many times larger than life, echoing the particular motifs of the region’s traditions. The Polish street artist known as NeSpoon travels from one nation to the next, alternately spray-painting or weaving these patterns on public surfaces for events like Sweden’s NO LIMIT festival and Berlin’s Urban Nation. She defines the works as “somewhere in between street art, pottery, painting, sculpture and jewelry.”

Though she’s been working in this style since 2009, NeSpoon began tailoring her lacework designs more specifically to regional traditions over the last few years. In 2017, for example, she met with and observed lacemakers in Póvoa da Atalia, Portugal to commemorate the vanishing craft practiced by female circles of craftspeople. She enlarged their patterns, and incorporated the women themselves into the resulting mural.

While many of these works are officially approved, particularly the larger pieces, NeSpoon also makes use of guerrilla-style methods, quickly spray-painting her lacework onto urban objects like utility boxes.

“Why laces? Because in laces there is an aesthetic code, which is deeply embedded in every culture,” she says. “In every lace we find symmetry, some kind of order and harmony, isn’t that what we all seek for instinctively?”

“Why street art? Because it gives freedom.”

Imagine your grandmother presenting  you with a knitted facehugger, dwarven helm or a life-sized boyfriend pillow for your birthday instead of a scratchy wool scarf. The world of knits goes far beyond beginner’s patterns for sweaters and caps, occasionally encompassing entire rooms or covering military tanks. This collection of weird knitted and crocheted things might even inspire you to break out a pair of needles yourself.

Facehugger Mask

Well, isn’t that cute. It’s a cozy little alien face hugger, just like you always wanted.

Brutal Knitting by Tracy Widdess

‘Brutal Knitting’ is a fitting name for this ongoing project by artist Tracy Widdess, which stretches the craft far beyond its humble origins of warmth and practicality. Her highly unusual knit works include some of the most bizarre hats you’ve ever seen, and a replica of the Lament Configuration puzzle box from Hellraiser.

The World’s Cutest Penguin Sweaters

Australia’s oldest man, 109-year-old Alfred Date, put his 80 years of knitting experience to work to create the world’s cutest sweaters for a bunch of oil-covered penguins after a spill on the Australian Phillip Island. The sweaters keep the penguins from ingesting toxins and prevent water from getting trapped under their oily feathers, which can cause them to freeze.

Gimli’s Dwarven Helm

“The helm I based directly on the helm that Gimli wears in the Lord of the Rings movies, the beard was my own design with massive creative input from my brother,” says DeviantArt member SadDaysCrochet of this creation.

My Knitted Boyfriend

If it’s a little lonely in your bed, but you don’t have the patience that a real flesh-and-blood boyfriend requires, there’s a solution. ‘My Knitted Boyfriend’ can be worn like a terrifying bodysuit by a real person, or stuffed to create a life-sized man-shaped pillow.

Surreal Knitted Room by Olek

The fiber artist known as ‘Olek,’ who’s responsible for yarn bombing practically every surface you can think of, knitted an entire gallery space for a piece called ‘Keith Meets Arch of Hysteria,’ a tribute to artists Keith Haring, Annie Leibovitz and Louise Bourgeois.

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Knit Wit 17 Fantastically Weird Fiber Art Creations

Test your climbing skills with a vertical ascent through three stories of a gallery atrium with the newest interactive installation by design collective Numen/For Use. Occupying Austria’s Architekturforum Tirol, ‘Tube’ is a network of connected safety nets suspended from the walls and ceiling, inviting visitors to crawl, slide and scramble until they hit various dead ends providing vantage points out the windows or onto other areas of the installation.

The angles are as irregular and organic as if they’d been woven by a spider or silkworm, creating a sort of human cocoon. The cables attaching the installation to the wall are elastic so the whole thing gently bobs up and down with the movement of its occupants at any given time. The structural support is designed in such a way that anyone climbing inside experiences the sensation of free-floating.

Stretching upward through an oculus in the gallery’s second floor, ‘Tube’ is an abstract composition, its jagged black form like a brushstroke against a network of erratic geometric lines. Contrasting against the white surfaces of the space, the installation stands out in stark relief, placing the emphasis on the shape of the nets and the bulges created by the people moving around inside.

Numen/For Use previously created a grid of climbable strings, a bounce house for adults and a network of translucent tunnels made of packing tape, humans crawling around inside like trapped insects.

The idea of beautifying an outdoor space seems straightforward enough – flowers and sculptures and whatnot – but Polish street artist NeSpoon turns that idea into something so beautifully different that it transforms the ordinary into the spectacular.

Working in paint, crochet, and carving, NeSpoon gives dingy and uncared-for urban surfaces new life by adorning them with what she calls “public jewelry.” Her pieces are inspired by lace, often taking on the shapes of enormous doilies painted on the sides of exterior walls.

Other lace-inspired pieces are crocheted into or onto various rough objects to create an extreme visual dichotomy. Some pieces are carved into wood or clay, the intricate patterns looking like entire universes. And then there are the truly random pieces painted onto pieces of concrete or the sides of moored boats.

For many of the pieces, NeSpoon has permission to apply her particular type of artwork on buildings or other public spaces. But some are true urban interventions, appearing in unexpected spaces to provide onlookers with a little bit of beauty and whimsy to brighten their day.

Urban sidewalks, sewer grates and dingy underpasses aren’t exactly the most likely places to find beautiful large-scale ornamental lace, but for artist NeSpoon Polska, that’s exactly where it belongs. The Polish artist creates both spray-painted street art and crocheted installations for interactive displays in all sorts of public spaces, from street lamps to abandoned houses.

Calling it ‘illegal city decor’ and ‘public jewelry,’ Polska wanders around Warsaw, swiftly painting parking meters, utility boxes, blank signs and other blank (and often ugly) urban surfaces. Some, like a giant mural taking up almost the entire side of a three-story building, are created with permission.

“Jewelry makes people look pretty, my public jewelry has the same goal, make public places look better. I would like people who discover, here and there, my small applications, to smile and just simply feel better,” says the artist.