With our first yarn bomb being dismantled shortly, I thought I’d share some tips and things we learned.
Firstly you will need:
A location – if it has a view like this then all the better, however wherever you choose should be easy and safe to get to.
Permission – we were lucky that the school saw this as a positive opportunity, and were happy to give us free rein.
A plan – Have a rough idea of what things will go where.
We measured the tree secretly before making the sock. I’d read somewhere before that it is a good idea to make the sock smaller than the tree, that way you can stretch it round and it’ll stay up. We were lucky enough to have a helping hand from mother nature here as the tree we picked has very rough bark – just perfect for keeping it’s sock up.
Things to take:
Several pairs of scissors – don’t take your best ones, as long as they’re sharp enough to cut the yarn you’re ok. Several pairs because it’s guaranteed that you’ll put them down somewhere & not be able to find them and spend longer looking for them than putting up the decorations!
Yarn needles – again take loads for the same reason as the scissors, these are even harder to find if you put them down somewhere.
Cable ties – perfect for attaching tree/bench ‘socks’.
Wire cutters – to cut the cable ties – you really don’t want to be using your scissors on these.
Fishing wire – great to ‘invisibly’ tie things
lots of spare yarn – no need to explain why you will need this!
camera – to record your decorations
Optional things:
step ladder – helpful and slightly safer than actually climbing the tree to attach your yarn!
Sign – how else will everyone know what it’s all about?
A disguise or two
and finally a preparation tip:
Run ends of your crochet in but leave long tails on everything, we used these tails to tie the stars to the trees. You can just cut them off if you don’t need them while you are there.
We also discovered that when making stripy covers that are going to be sat on, it’s worth doing a row of Double crochet around the edge of the cover. This provides a little more strength between the rows and stops the stripes pulling apart so easily. We used cable ties to attach the cover to the bench.
And lastly, the most important tip - make sure you’re not caught!
Happy yarn bombing
Sally
