Country Garden Crochet Bicycle

In line with the current trend for cycling what better way to celebrate than to our craft than upcycling a bicycle.

I had so much fun creating this quintessential english country rose garden wrapped around one of the bicycles that were kindly donated by our local recycling centre in Burniston.

A bed of 20 roses in shades of red, pink, peach and lemon made the cover for the seat. It wouldn’t be a rose garden without a cute little bumble bee, this little honey maker was donated by Mrs G, a very talented knitting friend.

Continuing the rose theme with 2 giant blooms displayed on the rear wheel.

With his cute pink button cheeks a snail this sweet just has to be forgiven for having a little nibble on the vegetation.

Nestling on the front wheel is a silky silver spiders web, home to two (not so scary) spiders, but wait a minute there’s only one!

There he is, he’s obviously just been for a spin, pardon the pun.

He has just been exploring the rose vine that’s creeping around the cross-bar.

The Country Rose Garden bicycle featured in the 2015 yarn bombing at the surgery along with another themed on the seaside. They certainly gained a lot of interest.

It took me approximately two weeks of crocheting to cover each bike and make the adornments

Charity Yarn Bombing 2015 – Part 1

 

For those who followed the project last year you will know we are a small GP surgery on the beautiful coast of North Yorkshire. We have a group of patients and friends of the surgery who love crafting with yarn, following the sucess of the yarn bombing last year we ran the event for 2015 following a similar format for but with some new themes.

Dinosaur Park

I had my doubts about including dinosaurs anticipating it would be limiting in terms of patterns, couldn’t have been more wrong as you can see.

We had quite a few knitted prehistoric deliveries both large and small.

Lots of dino’s for our park in a variety of sizes from the miniature 4-6 inch creations above that patients brought in. To the rather large Stan the Stegosaurus who you may have seen in a previous post where I shared the working progress of creating this colouful prehistoric creaature.

And Monty the Diplodocus.

Teddy Bear’s Picnic

This was one of my favourite pieces, you can see from the size of the raffle ticket just how tiny these little teddies are, they sat on their little picnic blanket contemplating their miniature sandwiches and cakes throughout the weekend. As I am sure you can imagine they were one of the first items to receive a bid.

There was an array of little woolly bears and teddy toys gathered in the picnic corner to share in the knitted and crochet cakes, biscuits and sanwiches including Mrs Baker Bear sat on the chair with piping bag in hand to finish off the last bun.

Rollo the african flower bear settled down amongst the log pile for a snooze after devouring his fill of the picnic.

To sit alongside the picnicing bears we had a stand (ok and yarn bomed step ladder) laden with tea cosies.

These were a very popular contribution to the event, it must be in celebration of the great british brew!

Down on the Farm

One of our group particularly requested we include a Farm theme this year, she had a new book by Sarah Keen that she was dying to try and we were so pleased with results, you can almost hear those little piggies snorting.

Our Parctice Nurse managed to aquire a hay bale for us to display our farmyard creatures, I was thrilled but my lovely hubby was less so as I used his car to collect it! Four weeks on and he has just about got the last of the straw removed from his car boot.

A patient kindly donated this gorgeous african flower horse, I believe it is from the Heidi Bears pattern but sadly the donator remains anonymous so I cannot be sure.

We also had a gathering of owls nestling in the bushes casting their wise eyes over the weekend proceedings.

And in the hedgerow below gathered a collection of bunnies and other creatures.

And birds simply sat on the fence watching the world go by.

 

I don’t want to bore you so will call this post part 1, I will continue working on compiling the other half of the images to post early next week. I am working tomorrow as we are open for our first Flu clinic, it is always a bit crazy at this time of the year when everyone wants to get their vaccination done early to protect against catching a flu bug!

 

 

Charity Yarn Bombing – Part 2

The seaside scene was really spectacular but I found it was the hardest to photograph because of the size. To give it some perspective the stretch of railing that it s dressing is 4 metres long. To get the whole thing into view it lacked detail so I will have to ask you to use your imagination a bit. I really regret not taking more close-up shots.

I had to wear a wrist support for a week after making two thirds of the sea blanket and was extremely grateful to Debs for taking over and finishing it. She made the wonderful pennant and ball bunting and the magical giant jellyfish too.

Sorry that the light doesn’t show up on the lighthouse but it really does work, honestly, the top lifts off and you just have to press down on the bulb and hey presto, it lights up! With a bulb top and bottom it gave off a good amount of light and drew lots of comments.

There was a family of whales swimming above the tiny fishes amongst the seaweed on the far side. In the centre were more fish,  jellyfish and a knitted submarine. The octopuses occupied the near side of our woolly sea blanket. As you can see some of the creatures were stitched into place and others were 3d and hung from the top giving the whole scene a life-like appearance.

At the back of the surgery the pond scene worked so well despite a last minute hitch about getting the cover made! We were very grateful to the local builders who we managed to rope into doing it for us just a week before the event.

We had little creatures nestling in the undergrowth.

And a tea cosy disguised as a fishing gnome.

Just around the corner from the pond was the little grotto.

Imogen finally got her wings thanks to Rosemary and she sat primly on her swing overlooking the scene below that was full of taodstools, mushrooms and gnomes.

At the front of the pond scene was this amazing tree that was full of little birds. It has found a new home as a window prop in a local shop in town.

The pond was home to a little family of ducks that swam amongst the groups of water lillies sent by my lovely Mama H.

And caterpillar was very good and did not nibble into our plants.

There will be one last post to show you that last of the photos including our safari corner with snakes, monkeys and friends.

Love Birds for the Yarn Bombing

How cute are these little love birds? They have been sent to alight on a tree in our charity Fantasy Garden yarn bombing at the surgery from the lovely Twisted Yarn

 

We had a bit of a moment when we thought they had been lost in the post but thankfully they had just been delayed for some reason.

Thank you so much for this gorgeous contribution. One of my friends has made a crochet tree and these will look right at home nestling in the branches.

They are such a pretty pair I think they will definitely be staying together.

Yarnbombing – Call to arms!

At last I reveal the secret project… and a request for a little help!

I work in a lovely little family-orientated GP surgery and I thought it would make our patients smile if we could yarn bomb the place with colourful flowers and wildlife animals and create a ‘Fantasy Garden’, and I thought why not ask for some help from my wonderful blogging friends.

• Can you Knit or Crochet?
• Do you own a yarn stash?
• Then maybe you would be able to help.

If you think you may be able to help make this crazy idea a reality at our little surgery, please email me at TheGrangeRange@hotmail.com and let me know whether you knit or crochet and if you would like any pattern links.

If we can make enough of a display to encourage monetary donations from patients and onlookers, we would like to collect for our local hospital and hospice.

This is a gigantic project, and I would be so grateful if anyone had any discarded flowers or some scraps of yarn left over that could be turned into flowers to help furnish our little surgery with wooly blooms or little animals.

So far I have been making the Birdie Decorations and the Happy Flowers both from Attic24; sunflowers; Shelly the garden snail; a little toadstool house and some gnomes; and the fairies.

Netting fixed over the handrails covered with flowers would create huge impact as patients visit, and maybe a beach scene as we are by the sea?

At the back of the surgery is a disused pond. A local building firm have agreed to donate a frame to support a blue tarpaulin so we can display knitted or crochet ducks, water lilies, frogs etc. and I would love to have some rabbits for under the shrubbery and squirrels and birds for in the trees and shrubs for the children to find.

Of course bunting would be a great feature too and always adds an air of festivity. Please feel free to make suggestions or give your feedback on these ideas.

I can’t help but feel this project is still in its infancy and there are so many ideas in my head that I think it will explode if I don’t share some of them with you.

Feeling inspired? Send me an email and let’s begin!

Bird Box on a Fence – Friday Fences

Just as a quick diversion from the usual crochet projects I thought it was about time I posted another image in support of Friday Fences. Yes I know it is a bit quirky and you may well be wondering . Why? But I ask you this. Why not?

This is another of the little areas in the woods near where I work, I go and sit in the picnic area and have my lunch on good days when the weather permits. I thought this was lovely and I left the remnants of my sandwich in the little built in birdhouse as an offering to thank the wildlife for sharing their lovely wood. I hope they like egg mayo!

I was not having the best of days and I was enjoying a bit of peace away from the office and was delighted when this butterfly alighted upon a dandelion beside me.

Well back to the crochet projects so I will have something else to share with you all soon.

Related articles

• Fences (adventurestartswithl.wordpress.com)
• My Home Town: Week 2- Fences (daysofphotographs.com)
• Fences (aworldontheedge.com)

Deer Visiting in the Garden

We get Deer regularly in our garden but I can never get a good image of them as they are so timid and run as soon as they hear the door opening. These are the best I have managed so far.

They are lovely to see but can be a bit of a pest as they eat your flowers.

There are actually two of them, can you just see the other one behind the tree?

I did not have time to change my lens so the picture is a bit blurry.

As soon as they heard the click of the camera they were off like a shot.

They look so amusing, all you see is their little white bums bouncing as they make their hurried departure.

Last year we had a family of foxes who visited regularly, I am hoping to catch them for you too soon.

Related articles

• Return to the Wild: A Deer Story (showmeoz.wordpress.com)
• Potatoes and roe deers (bentehaarstad.wordpress.com)