Butterflies and Bees (Yarn)Swarm into Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & bees strung ready to be hung up

Today's the day that all the butterflies and bees swarmed into Rowntree Park, York to form a yarnstorm or perhaps more accurately a yarnswarm! This installation is part of the celebrations for Rowntree Park's 100th birthday.  We have had over 725 butterflies and bees fly in to join the display. There are almost twice as many butterflies as bees and a handful of caterpillars and snails, not to mention a whole host of lovely flowers.  People have knitted, crocheted, stitched, pompommed, felted, origamied (is that a word?) and funky foamed a fabulous swarm for us to display. 

Deborah hanging up the butterflies & bees

Here I am doing the same

Deborah New (& Polly - thanks, Polly!) and I have strung them together and hung them in the arbour at Rowntree Park, York for you to enjoy.  We hope you like them and that you have fun spotting your favourites or the ones you've made.  Why not take your own pictures of the Butterflies & Bees yarnstorm and post them on social media using #butterfliesandbees and tag me in  - @hippystitch - to be sure I get to see them!

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

Butterflies & Bees Yarnstorm - Rowntree Park, York

There's an information sign if you want to find out more about the project - or you can take a look here.

Information Sign

And don't forget to look carefully so you don't miss anything...

Don't miss spotting all the bees!

The butterflies and bees will be in place until the end of September 2021 after which they will be sold to raise money for the Friends of Rowntree Park, who work hard to help maintain, improve and promote the park for everyone's enjoyment.  Sales will take place below the cafe on these dates:

Sunday 10 October 2021 10:30 - 12:30
Saturday 16 October 2021 10:30 - 12:30

If you have enjoyed seeing this installation and want to make a donation to the Friends of Rowntree Park, pop into Rowntree Park Café where there is a tin for your donation.  Alternatively, you can donate directly by visiting the Friends of Rowntree Park website here.

If you want to read more about this project and the Happy 100th Birthday Banner then take a look here.

Happy 100th Birthday Banner

Looking forward to seeing your pictures and to seeing you at the sales!

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!

First Rowntree Park Butterflies & Bees Workshop

Workshop Participants

We had our first Butterflies & Bees workshop in Rowntree Park on Saturday.  It was lovely to have an in person workshop.  The weather was glorious and there was plenty of room to spread out.  We had knitting, stitching, pompom making, crocheting, some garden fork weaving and finger knitting going on!

Plentiful supplies were available...

Plentiful Supplies

And lots of fab things were made.  This lovely garden fork butterfly was a team effort by Charlotte, her step-mum Mandi and her dad, Martin...

Garden Fork Butterfly

Candi, Alice, India and Louise stitched some fab bees...

Stitched Bees

Sara crocheted and Louise knitted some super cute bees...

Crochet & Knitted Bees

Val, Iris, Cara & Agnes stitched some beautiful butterflies...

Stitched Butterflies

Cara & Iris, Vicki & Heidi & Charlotte made pompom bees...

Pompom Bees

Heidi also knitted a tiny purple and blue bee which is sitting on a lovely leaf that Muna crocheted...

Knitted Bee Perching on Crochet Leaf

It was a very productive afternoon!

We have another workshop in Rowntree Park on Friday 11 June 2021 - International Yarnbombing Day (how appropriate!).  There are still some places available.  You can book here.  Let's hope for more lovely weather.  If you can't make the workshop you can still 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.  More project details are here.

Big Knitting Creates a Rainbow

Big Knitted Rainbow and Little Knitted Rainbows

I recently knitted some little rainbows, that are currently hanging in my window but which will be heading along to the Rainbows for Rowntree Park yarnstorming project in due course. Offering a visible thank you to the NHS, they were also fun to make, look very cute and definitely contibute a positive vibe which is much needed at the moment.  So, what next? I decided I'd like to make a big knitted rainbow.  My big knitting needles are 20mm in diameter so need some big yarn.  I save colourful old T shirts in case I might be able to recycle them for a craft project and here they came into their own!  I didn't think I'd have a rainbow's worth of colours but it turned out I did...

A Rainbow's Worth of Old T Shirts

So I got to work preparing some upcycled T-shirt yarn.  You fold your T shirt not quite in half lengthways and cut strips not quite to the edge. Then unfold and at the edge where it isn't cut through make a series of diagonal cuts to produce a continuous piece of yarn. You can use the sleeves as well.  I cut my strips about 1 inch/2.5cm wide.

Fold T shirt Over and Cut Strips

Unfold T shirt to Reveal Cut Strips

You can find a great YouTube video from Sustain my Craft Habit showing you exactly how here.  All my adult T-shirts produced over 20m of yarn each...

Big Needles and T-shirt Yarn

I cut up 2 red T-shirts in different shades of red as I knew I would need more than one T-shirt's worth of yarn for the red section of my rainbow. Next I started knitting...

Casting On With The Big Needles

The pattern I used was from Knitting by Post and was the Easy Medium Sized Knitted Rainbow knitting pattern.  I only knitted with half the number of stitches as my rainbow wasn't going to be double sided. Here it is knitted up...

Big Knitted Rainbow

Next I attached it to some plastic fencing using some of the T shirt yarn and some clear fishing line.  Then I made a whole load of cloud coloured pompoms in different sizes...
 

A Suitcase Full of Pompom Clouds

 
and attached them to the bottom of my rainbow.  The finished item was up on my railings in time to "Clap for our Carers" where we show our appreciation with some hearty applause for the NHS and all the key workers keeping things going during the pandemic.

Finished Big Knitted Rainbow

My big knitted rainbow is about 1 metre wide and 0.5 metre high.  I don't think you'll miss it if you're passing by!  Why not hunt out your old T shirts and have a go?

Extreme Knitting & a Fantasy Fish

Beached Fish

You may have read about this year's Fantasy Fish Yarnstorm which will be on display in Rowntree Park, York, later this year.  In preparation I have been doing some extreme knitting to create a large fish (over 2m long!) which will swim along and join the display.

Extreme knitting to scale

Anticipating the possibility of bad weather on a recent trip to Scotland I took my extreme needles and some yarn with me in case I was stuck indoors for a while.  Actually the weather wasn't so bad but I managed to fit in some extreme knitting anyway.  I had some yarn left over from a previous project - I think it might have been from those big jerseys from the Knit a Bike Installation.  Anyway I soon ran out of that!  However a quick trip round the charity shops for wool blankets and the local household store for some dye yielded positive results ...

Starting with a cream wool blanket

Nice bright coloured dyes

Add to the washing machine

Excellent results

 
Having got some lovely colours I decided to have a pink stripe in my fish and as I'd already started with yellow I decided to continue in that colour.  I cut up my blankets to form more yarn - 1.6kg of yellow and 900g of pink and then I was ready to carry on.

More yarn ready for extreme knitting

After all that I needed a break - did they know about my fishy theme?
 

A well deserved break - coffee and a chocolate fish!

When I returned home I just needed to make an eye ...

Finger knitted fish eye with pompom pupil

Now it just needs stabilising and it'll be ready for display - but that's a job for another day!

If you want to join in with our #FantasyFish project, details of the workshops are here.  If you can't make the workshops you can find Fantasy Fish knitting patterns here.  We would be very pleased to receive #fishfromafar as well as close by! 

Poppies in the Park Workshop at the Golden Ball York

The first Poppies in the Park workshop was at the Golden Ball pub in York on Tuesday.  It was a busy night and we took over two rooms. 

It was quite a night for stitching - possibly because we had gatecrashed the UFO (UnFinished Objects) Group's regular night and had a contingent from Sew Chatty join us too.  You may remember the fantastic yarnstormed horse that the UFO Group created and the beautiful flower garland that Sew Chatty made at our first yarnstorming event in Rowntree Park.

White stitched poppies

Red stitched poppies

Ordinary knitting was also on the needles.  No needles necessary for the arm knitting and finger knitting though - and spot the pompoms!

Knitted poppies, pompoms, arm knitting & finger knitting

And of course there was big knitting too - Fiona & Sarah took up the big knit poppy challenge.  I hope there'll be someone to continue the big knitting challenge at our next workshop on Saturday!

Big knit poppies are underway!

Thanks to everyone who came along and made poppies with us.  We've made a fantastic start!  Thanks too, to the Golden Ball for having us.

Poppies in the park workshops are taking place in Craft & Design Month - come and be creative with us!

The Poppies in the Park yarnstorming installation goes up in Rowntree Park, York on 11 June 2015 and is sponsored by Friends of Rowntree Park, Boyes and Duttons for Buttons