Yarnbombing the school

Not long after I learned to crochet last year, I stumbled across an amazing book at our local library. It was called Yarnbombing and it opened up a whole world that I had never heard of. The official definition of yarnbombing is "the activity of putting knitted coverings on public objects, especially secretly and without official permission". Everything about this appealed to me. Beautifying public spaces with colourful graffiti in a covert ops kind of way. How totally cool. I fantasized about sneaking into our prep playground and turning it rainbow.

Imagine my excitement to discover that the theming for this years school fete involved plans to yarnbomb the massive Moreton bay fig tree. I had no idea that so many other school mums knew how to crochet. So every Thursday we met after school and worked on a red and white piece to help dress the tree. Suddenly at Saturday ballet there were fellow crochet comrades all hooking away. The end result was an amazing collaboration.

There was a wonderful installation of rainbow pods dreamed up by another arty mum,

Trees wrapped up for winter,

And of course my little bird perch was up there too.

Despite a dreary day for the fete and a muddy oval that moved all the rides to a different part of school, all the colour made the day sing. We definitely had a great day. What with a day pass for unlimited dodgem car rides,

guinea pigs to groom,

and Liongirl finally had her wish, a whole fairy floss to herself. That beautiful vintage dress became a very sticky pink mess pretty quickly, luckily it did all wash out.

I cannot believe that Roboboy and I managed to stumble into a school that is so, well, cool.
Wouldn't it be great if we could keep up that crochet momentum and do a few more branches, maybe a different colour for each branch......... could look amazing for next years fete.

Birdmaking and crochet flowers

Well it has been a while between posts but for lots of really good reasons. There are about a zillion projects on the go over here at Betsy's which have left little time for blogging (as it should be of course). There has been a frenzy of bird creations, crochet, yarnbombing, sculptures, de cluttering, house plan tweaking, kitchen design planning, stone slab inspections, white wall painting, miniature dresser makeovers and of course a sprinkling of op shopping.

It all started with some seed pods really. From the Illawarra flame tree in fact, which is an extremely ugly looking tree that produces spectacular seed pods that look just like birds.

So the kids got straight into this little project with some paint for the bodies, polyfill for the chests, pipe cleaners for the legs, fabric and bendy straws for wings, colourful feathers for tails and some googly eyes and look at the results.

Roboboy's bird has bendable wings (thanks to the straws) and the cat was suitably impressed.

So then we took our birdmaking to school to expand the flock. Love those one eyed birds.

And seeing how the fete was coming up we thought we might be able to contribute an installation. Time to whip up a perch for our little family. (This actually involved much cursing and swearing at midnight the night before the fete trying to teach these little birds how to defy gravity and stop flipping upside down and dangling off the perch). It was so big I had to hang it off the fan, and keep the cat away.

And some gorgeous crochet flowers to add a little colour on the bottom. The lovely simple pattern can be found here. I think I might make a whole chain of these for miss Liongirl's room.

And here is the installation hanging our school's very own Magic Faraway tree.

Back soon with some op shop finds and my first foray into yarnbombing. Must say, I'm hooked!