Not so secret yarn bomb

Following on from the highly successful craft summer school I have been putting together some events for the autumn and beyond while we wait for the outcome of the lottery funding bid.

As we have lots of yarn based resources and skills it made sense to base an open day around this and so 'For the love of wool' began to take shape. We had a 'yarn bomb' window display earlier in June (International Yarn Bomb Day was 9th June) but we never actually got to bomb the town. It seemed like a perfect way to publicise our open day on the 20th October, I mentioned it to a few people and everyone was really enthusiastic, keen to join in. Within  a few days I had offers of live sheep, a time lapse photo shoot, You Tube video, knitters, support from the Leominster in Bloomers and a willing team of volunteers. Now its one thing to pop out under the cover of darkness to create annoymous wool grafitti but once more people are involved and you need some daylight to do the filming, it becomes another matter. 

Whose permission do you need? Let's start with no one. "But you might get arrested" said my boss. "All publicity" I said. However, being a good citizen and keen to keep my job I used contacts and asked the Town Council. They thought it sounded like a lot of fun and would be good for the town, "but it's not our decision, you'll have to ask Herefordshire Council" I fixed a smile as I felt my heart sinking.

Three departments later......no one has heard of yarn bombing and think it sounds like something that probably shouldn't be happening. One woman said 'well, of course you realise it's illegal' but couldn't actually tell me how. Is it vandalism? Trespassing?  "So what would happen if I actually just did it?" There was silence at the other end before she decided she needed to refer me to someone else, it was the Friday before bank holiday weekend and clearly not what she wanted to try and deal with.

• No call back today but more support from 2 other craft shops in the town. Suggestions to link with the museum and Priory church, a donation of yarn and offer of machine knittng tuition, a bag full of knitting, a new customer just learning to knit and wanting to join in. All just brilliant. It's going to happen, I'm not taking no on this one.

How to make a pompom ice cream

Non-melting, calorie-free ice cream in any flavour you desire!

These were designed for one of the summer-themed windows at ECHO last year but have proved a real hit with people coming in to ask if they can buy them. We've included them in the summer window this year as well.

I'm not giving a full tutorial as basically you make a pompom using colours to suit your flavour and then we stuck them onto real ice cream cornets with pva glue. OK, they're not very durable but fun for the summer. We added flakes (pleated and rolled dark brown card), cherries (mini red pompoms), sprinkles (chopped up bits of wool) and some flags.

Craft summer school update

Yesterday was officially the last day for summer school but yet again we had a lovely group in who thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and are keen to come back soon. 

Plans are well under way for Ghoul School happening on Saturday 27th October which will be at the end of half term week. We'll be offering Sew Spooky to make peg doll witches and cute zombies from 10-12 and then all out horror craft fest from 1-3 with fake blood and severed limbs. Can't wait to make the samples for that one!