Tree sock yarn bomb - Mark-It: Liverpool Street Art Festival

MARK-IT presents Liverpool’s first Street Art Festival, bringing you the best of local, national and international Street Art.

MARK-IT will turn the streets of the Baltic Triangle into an outdoor gallery filled with all sorts of delights : giant paper animals meandering through the streets, elevated bicycles of concrete and iron, splashes of animated gloriousness, corridors of woolly colour, dancers in shadow and tiny performers singing songs of love and loss in the cracks and crannies of our metropolis.

Investigate the world of the Hidden City this June and see the streets as never before!

Part of the Cultural Programme underpinning the International Festival for Business (IFB) 2014.

An there is a yarn bomb!! At 5am this morning a group of us met on Park Lane in Liverpool to install 44 knitted and crocheted tree huggers/socks!

The combined efforts of the Happy Hookers, Girl on Purl Action (me!), The Nordic Knitters , Crackin Crafting Community and some independent artists triumphed today, and Liverpool and the MARKIT Liverpool StreetArt Festival awoke to a woolly corridor leading people down Park Lane to Jamaica Street. 

Tree seam!

It was cold, we where tired, (special thanks here to The Baltic Bakehouse for providing us with much needed coffee and bacon butties this morning!) and bark can be scratchy to sew against but we where determined and the support from local passers by it went up in no time compared to what we originally thought. 

The tree covers are going to stay up for the festival this weekend (click the first link for a list of what's going on! Its pretty big!) and for the Liverpool Biennial before donating, what we can salvage and after a dry clean, to a few charities :)

There are signs up on the lamposts of Park Lane so you can see who did what and if you took part, where your tree/s are!

There's my logo!

I made 2, as did Chelle, and we have another combined one to go up at a later date! It was a lot of fun playing with the stripe designer online, the only downside was that Tulip is most upset that she is without a blanket so designing her her own! 

Perfect kitten blanket

A huge thank you has to be expressed to Karen Macfarlane for spending months of her life organising a lot of crafters, supplying us all with yarn, measuring tree's and sorting the whole thing out!

Hopefully you will all enjoy a little bit of colour for a few months and check out the festival!

One of my trees

One of Chelle's trees

My other tree

Me & Karen at 5am at tree no.1!

Cotton Addiction and Recycling

Now a lot of the projects I've been working on lately have been crochet but instead of using wool I've been using cotton and I have loved it!

All the 'Mr & Mrs' bunting has been in cotton as has the bicycle set (wheel cover, bunting and seat cover) and the butterfly for the wedding bouquet, have also been in cotton.

Cotton is always a popular choice for summer knitting as well as crochet and I know some knitters who have never touched it and some crocheters who wont use anything else but prior to a few months ago I had never used it!

Cotton comes in various shades and sizes, just as wool does, but I don't feel its as widely available as wools (personal opinion as I've been trying to track down a deep red that comes in larger than 50g balls and does not cost the earth!) but what I have seen (again personal view) is a large range of recycled cotton! This makes me exceptionally happy due to the environmental questions regarding the production of cotton but...

My sister works for the environmental department of The University of Leeds so this was ideal for the bicycle project for her. Now I normally do not use magazine projects, its not a snobbish thing, I just tend not to have a lot of time for personal projects or see many that make me want to work even later than I already do to make some headway. I have 2 half finished jumpers in a draw for myself, one started this year in cables and one that has been there for 2 years in fair isle.

This one was from Issue 17 of Simply Crochet and the reason I loved it so much was not the pattern, or the colours (far too bright for my tastes) but its originality.

Now this brings us back to cotton...for such a project it required something that was a bit sturdier in terms of washing, being on a bike and all, but what I loved about cotton was the smoothness. Now you can get smooth wools such as bamboo and I find baby soft wools very smooth but there is just something very different about cotton. There seems to be no weight to the project either regardless of its size.

The Sirdar Double Knitting Simply Recycled cotton I used for this project is 49% acrylic and 51% recycled cotton so its not the perfect yet but its good to see some companies (as they are not the only one with a recycled range) taking some responsibility, even in the craft world which is seen to be more environmentally friendly as it is.

Wheel cover 

Now the colour range is limited, you have no chance if you wanted a very vibrant colour, they are all quite muted, but I like the warn, vintage, aged feel it gives.

Bike seat cover  - stretched out to show side detail

On a less eco note I have also been using Debbie Bliss's DK Cotton which is 100% cotton and the luxury feel of that! Now this does come in a lot more vibrant colours so spoilt for choice!  I do not know where this addiction to cotton has come from; I guess its been after months of working on such huge projects with wools, as soft as they are, my extra sensitive skin was drying out.

The wheel cover with the flash on the camera! 

Eco cotton for a eco project for a eco warrior!

Give it another 2 months when the weather starts to go colder again and I'll be addicted to a chunk wool again but I'll remain a cotton girl whilst the sun is out! Now to make some flowers for her basket :)

My cousins grandmother used to buy large second-hand charity shop knitwear and frog it completely to make 2/3 small cardigans for the children (aka me & her grandchildren) and I always thought that was a brilliant use of outdated/no longer loved knits.

Do you prefer recycled yarn/cotton over others? Do environmental factors influence your yarn choice?

Big thanks to my boyfriend again for being a project 'model' ha ah!

WWKIPD!!

Today is WWKIPD or...

WWKIP Day is unique, in that it's the largest knitter run event in the world. Each local event is put together by a volunteer or a group if volunteers.

WWKIP Day takes place from the second Saturday to the third Sunday of June each year; making it a week long celebration of knitting and other fiber arts.

Dates this year:

14th - 22nd June

I love their blurb!

Now begins the week that we would show that knitting is not just for old ladies at home on the couch - nay it is for everyone young and old, men and women and it's fun, it's creative and it's a great social act where you can share inspiration and ideas.

I hope that today and the next week will bring new relationships both across countries but also within the local community around each KiP.

This year, 45 countries with more than 600 kips. That is amazing!

Imagine all the people involved in this are connected - then the world becomes smaller and more fun. 

There are so many health benefits of knitting and crochet that are always being publicised and although I tried to register my own craft meets on their website, they have been having some technical issues...

But there are two!!

This Thursday 19th June - The Caledonia 22 Caledonia Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, L7 7DX

Monday 23rd (a day late but so...) June - House, 25 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4DN

There's always so much positivity surrounding craft and with Etsy now having a TV commercial there is never a better time to join the craft revolution!

The Wedding!

Me & the beautiful bride :)

So on Friday 13th June my beautiful cousin, Jilly-Sue Spencer, became Mrs Dillon and I had the honour and privileged of being a bridesmaid and also the mega responsibility of doing all the decorations. Now do not get me wrong, I volunteered and I was over-the-moon that she said yes (ha ha!).

Vintage themed wedding

Bunting triangles

Bless my folks for helping

I love planning; all the ideas we bounced around over colour, style, measuring the room, ordering fabric, test flowers, wool colours, researching other peoples weddings... : D

It seemed like such a long time of planning and making and then the 2 weeks before the wedding flew by!

However what I didn't anticipate was exactly how long sewing together over 200 ft of bunting would take, even with a sewing machine, or how long 80 pom-poms would take to open out, never mind dividing   over 500 pieces of tissue paper to make them colour coordinated.

Nor how to attach stems to bridal flowers when everything is polystyrene based. A huge thank you here to my long suffering boyfriend Tom for helping me test 4 different types of glue at 4am in the morning after finishing work! Smaller items such as the large crochet bunting, butterflies and fabric love birds where a breeze (hot gluing pearl beads onto a love bird at 2.30am trying to avoid the kitten was fun!).

Bridesmaids flowers

However for all my grumbling, lack of sleep etc etc the most important think to take away from all this is the pride and happiness I felt in my work, the combined effort of everyone else in my family who helped set the room up the night before, finishing it on the day and the following day when we had to take it all down!) and the look on all the other guests faces when they saw the room, especially the bride and groom.

 A wonderful day was had by all, the weather was beautiful, the afternoon tea was amazing and the karaoke was thankfully not too bad!! I also had a future bride to be want to take the bunting off me for her wedding next year! Spreading the wedding love :)

Although according to Tom I'm not allowed to 'get any ideas'! What is he gonna be like when I'm designing baby clothes! :P

Hand knitted/crochet flowers complete with blue butterfly for a beautiful vintage bride

Bridal flowers ready & waiting in a vintage jug

 Let me know what you think of it all!!