When the craze of yarn bombing – where guerilla knitting hits the streets – came to Selkirk, no-one was prepared for the remarkable results…
Yarn bombing is a craze taking the world by storm, with covert knitters taking their guerilla art onto the streets as they stitch cozies for everything from post boxes and street railings to monuments and buses.
But while Paris, New York and Vancouver have all been targeted, it’s not the sort of thing you expect in the Borders.
But that’s exactly what happened in Selkirk recently, when residents awoke to find their town transformed by a project that had started to take shape two years earlier.
‘We’d just had the Yes Festival in the town and were discussing ideas for the next one when someone mentioned yarn bombing,’ explains Kay Ross, one of the instigators. ‘I didn’t know what it was, so I came home and Googled it and thought, “hmmm, yes, we could do that”.’
Kay then set about recruiting knitters. ‘I sent a letter to the local paper, but because the whole point of yarn bombing is that it’s done in secret, I kept it vague and just mentioned an art project. I invited anyone who knits and crochets to a coffee morning and about 24 people from Selkirk, Ettrickbridge and Hawick turned up, which was great.’
Having signed up her knitters, the group then planned their ‘attack’.
‘I did a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from the web,’ says Kay. ‘A friend and I had walked the streets of Selkirk, taking photographs of places you could yarn bomb. The end of the PowerPoint was pictures of Selkirk looking very grey in the winter, so the contrast was just great.
‘I also listed various sites, so people had a choice. One lady knitted loads of strips which ended up covering the handrails at traffic lights, while somebody else would say, well, there’s five of us so we’ll do the bridge. A couple of knitters were from Ettrickbridge so they did a couple of things in their village. It was just fantastic because you knew everyone was working away.’
The knitting and crocheting took 10 months.
‘We had a monthly get together, a big old-fashioned show and tell. I was thrilled with the results; it wasn’t just what people produced, it was the acceptance of everyone’s contribution, small and large. We had people aged 30 to 104 working on the project. One elderly lady with arthritis, who can only knit half an hour at a time, did a few things of her own, but she supported everyone. It was really good fun.’
Having spent months in a frenzy of secret knitting, the time finally came to decorate the town: ‘I don’t think any of us anticipated the impact or response. It’s been fantastic. As we were putting it up everyone asked “what are you doing?” and started taking pictures. It was really lovely. I was repairing two snakes in the car park one day and a cafe owner rushed up to me and said her business had gone up so much after a bad summer; she was delighted. The local butcher was interviewed by BBC television and told them people were coming into his shop smiling and chatting. I never anticipated that.
‘I was speaking to an elderly artist yesterday and he was talking about the need for people to see that, despite the technological world we live in, there is still a hunger for creativity. I am a quilter and have always felt that women’s skills have been underrated. That’s why people took it on; it was a bit of a dare, putting your stuff on the street. Instead of knitting another jumper for your child or grandchild, it was an opportunity to knit a caterpillar and put it up in a tree.’
(This feature was originally published in 2015)
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