Second Rowntree Park Butterflies & Bees Workshop

Workshop Participants

 
Today was International Yarnbombing Day which was quite appropriate as we were making butterflies and bees for the Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm that's going up in Rowntree Park, York!  Although the weather wasn't quite as good as at our last workshop it was still warm.  Butterflies and Bees were being stitched, knitted and pompommed...

Stitched Bees & a Pompom Bee

Stitched & Knitted Butterflies

Some flew off to be finished at home.  Gina brought the butterflies she'd been knitting at home to add to the swarm...

Gina's Knitted Butterflies

A group of friends popped by...

Di, Beth, Anne & Monica

to deliver their makes...

Flowers, Butterflies & Bees

and after the workshop, Deborah & I went for a lovely coffee & pastry at Rowntree Park Cafe and collected a few more makes...

Crochet & Pompom Bees and a Fab Felt Butterfly

All in all it was an excellent day for increasing the swarm of butterflies & bees.  Thank you so much to everyone who has made some!

Want to find out more about the Butterflies and Bees Yarnstorm? Take a look here for details, workshops and patterns. If you can't make a workshop, you can join in by making at home or with friends.  You've got till the end of July 2021 to get your makes to Rowntree Park Cafe.  All the patterns are online here or use your own.  Saturday is World Wide Knit in Public Day - so there's an opportunity to dust off your needles and get knitting - in public!

World Wide Knit in Public Day & Knit to Gather Project

Knitting in public with plastic bag yarn

Sunday 15 June was a World Wide Knit in Public Day.  So, I thought I'd go out and take part.  I chose one of my favourite venues - Rowntree Park Cafe in York and off I went.  My project was quite specific.  I am knitting some squares from used plastic carrier bags for the community knitting project "Knit to gather".  The aim of this project is to make a large scale dress from these knitted plastic squares.  And it will be exhibited at the June Art Markets in Holmfirth on Sunday 22 June & Sunday 29 June 2014.  The project is being co-ordinated by Rebecca Fairley & Emma Kirkby-Geddes.

However there was a little yarn preparation involved before I started.  I chose a couple of suitable plastic bags (one very large and one standard size).  I opened them out, cut off any handle bits, cut up the side and along the bottom until I had a flat rectangular shape.  Then I cut in a spiral with the width varying (quite wildly and widely from about 1cm to 5cm) until all the bags were cut up.  I ended up with 2 balls of yarn.  One largeish and one small.  Here's the bigger of the two.  

plastic bag yarn

It weighed in at 85g.  I don't know what the smaller one weighed as I cut that one up when I was out.

more plastic bag yarn

The aim was to knit some 20cm squares for the project.  My first square used 15mm needles, 12 stitches and what I call Grandma stitch as it was a stitch my Grandma taught me when I was little.  It looked like this ... 

Grandma stitch square

Using the same needles and number of stitches I then knitted a stocking stitch square ...

stocking stitch square

and then using 9mm needles and 18 stitches I knitted a garter stitch square which also needed my second ball of plastic bag yarn ...

garter stitch square incorporating most of the second smaller ball of yarn

When you look at them altogether you can see that the Grandma stitch square is somewhat larger.  Anyway I hope they will be some use to the "Knit to gather" project.
 

all three squares - rather varying sizes!

Here's an article from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner about the project: 
Holmfirth is knitting plastic bags together on this arty 're-cycling' project 
and I can't wait to see the finished dress!