Help the Craft Club Yarnbombers!

How does a 10feet high crocheted Christmas tree sound to you? Pretty awesome, right?

And what if I told you that you could easily contribute to making one… and that afterwards the used squares will be made into blankets and donated to the homeless community? I’m in, because this is a project that’s right where I like it: fun & social at the same time.

It’s organised by The Craft Club Yarnbombers, which is a group of lovely ladies from Essex that yarnbomb mailboxes… and do a pretty neat job with that.
All you need to do is crochet 1 (or more) green squares, between 5 and 7 feet wide. The picture below links to their facebookpage. Mail thecraftclubyarnbombers@gmail.com for info where to send your contributions to!

#yarnifiedlovebomb February 2015

When I started yarnbombing, I had only one goal: to make people smile. I have the hope that my yarnbombs will be repeated by other yarnbombers all over the world, or that I can inspire somebody to start yarnbombing as well.
As I mentioned before: Instagram is a great community. More than on other social networks, it allows you to connect with other likeminded people quickly and the feedback you get is enormous.
I was completely in love with the #yarnifiedlovebomb project as soon as I read about it on Instagram. The idea behind it is simple: you crochet hearts, and add a tag on them – stating “you are loved”. You leave the hearts around on the 13th of each month, when yarnbombers all over the world spread out hearts. People can find the hearts and pick them up – thus you create a smile with another person. Getting me back to where I started 🙂

I decided to join in. I made 4 hearts at first, because I was also making the snowy yarnbomb in the same period.
I looked around the net for some patterns and came up with these:

heart # 1 (pattern by Nallie Radloff, but she has updated her blog and I can’t seem to find it anymore *haha*)
heart # 2
heart # 3
heart # 4

#1

#2

#3

#4

 

So, the day after my previous yarnbomb (the snowy one) I set out for my first #yarnifiedlovebomb. And I loved it. Where as with the first two yarnbombs I was really nervous on getting caught, I now just installed them on my way to work and took time out to picture them.
It was a lot of fun to do and since I headed out into the city again that night (it was Friday after all), I made 4 more when I got home from work and spread those out as well.

The irony of it all? I said the day before that I would celebrate the day one of my yarnbombs would last longer than a day. Well: bring out the champagne! Tonight I just received a lovely message on instagram that one of my hearts was found. By a Spanish girl from Barcelona – who, judging from her instagram account, loves to crochet as well. This means that the heart stayed on one of the most pictured bridges in Gent for just about a week!

I know one thing for sure: I’ll be doing this each month… 🙂 Already looking forward to the next one!

 

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A snowy yarnbomb

As promised, I would keep track on my yarnbombing here. For my second project I decided not to go for an amigurumi figure. The previous one took me a lot of work and was quickly removed. Something more simple would do the trick.

I decided to measure up a little post in Gent. I decided to make a simple band of half double crochets, alternating rows of white with rows of blue and adding a single crochet border in white to it. Then I added some snowflakes. I searched online a bit and came up with this easy pattern. I made some flakes with a starting ring of 3 and some of 5 – which resulted in 5 or 7 ‘arms’ on the flake.

This was the result:

Measuring.

4 rows of blue, 4 rows of white.

The basic piece is finished!

First snowflake!

All snowflakes!

My tag!

Tadaaaa!

 
As I read somewhere as a tip when yarnbombing onto a post, you have to make your piece about two centimeters shorter than the post is wide. I did that and it matched up perfectly.

I was really nervous when I installed my first yarnbomb, but then I had my husband on the lookout to watch for people passing by. This time it wasn’t in the middle of the night, but before work, and I was on my own.
When I measured up my work, some people passed by, not really taking notice. And old man passed by as well, and he gave me the strangest look – but didn’t ask anything. When I installed the yarnbomb, that same old man passed by again. It was more or less the same hour of day and old people often have routines, so I guess that street was on his routine path. He gave me the weirdest look again, but didn’t ask a thing 😉
Unfortunately, by the time I got back from work, about 8 hours later – the piece had been removed already. Lucky for me, the community of yarnbombers on Instagram is really supportive. I’ve by now gotten used to the idea that work will get removed quickly and that I have to search for things that are harder to remove 🙂

I’ve gotten two new projects in mind – first one will be a springtime yarnbomb in Gent again. But before that – I’m writing up a second blogpost tonight, showing you what I did for #yarnifiedlovebomb this month!