Yarn Bombing: Westhoughton's Festival

Yarn bombing is hardly a new phenomenon these days.  Most people have heard about something public being covered in knitting or crochet even if they don't know what it's called.  Wikipedia also notes it's other names, including: guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting or graffiti knitting which all lead a rather dangerous air to something that wraps parts of a town's landscape in snuggly, brightly coloured yarn creations.  Cosies for street furniture.  Blankets for bus stops.  All in all it's a rather attractive way to decorate the, often grey, town centre near you! 

Westhoughton has a whole weekend devoted to this rather entertaining craft/street art.  Yup.  A whole weekend!  Westhoughton is a rather small little town in the North of England, unremarkable perhaps to those that drive through it on their way to the bigger nearby towns of Wigan and Bolton.  But like most little towns, it has its pride.  It also has it's own bizarre story involving a farmer from long ago, his brand new gate and a silly cow.  Consequently the inhabitants are fondly knows as "Keawyeds" (cow heads).  It's a cracking yarn.  I'll tell it to you sometime, over a pint at my local, which is has many pieces of art to illustrate our local heritage.  Anyway, back to yarn. 

I love that my hometown has a yarny festival and this time I wanted to be a part of it.  It's only the second year of festivities, but I'm hoping it's the start of something that'll last for years.  So, Planet Yarn had a stall!  It was a lot of fun setting up and decorating my own little shop for the day.  Sadly day one was rather too windy for our little gazebo and we had to take it down in the very early afternoon.  However day two was splendid! 

With the help of my lovely husband and my yarn-obsessed (and also lovely) sister the gazebo got put up and all my yarny goodies were put on display.  It looked really pretty I thought...but then I'm biased! 

See that little table at the front?  Want a closer look? Go on then...

Ta daaaah!  The pom pom table!  Me and my sister Tania were inundated with small people who were quite eager to learn the dark arts of pom pom making.  We made cute little pom poms with forks and gave them googly eyes.  I had far more fun than a 41 year old maybe should have making pom poms.  Heh!

 

Here are a few of the younger pom pom experts, they made tremendously adorable little pom pom critters:

 Now here's some photos of the fantastic creations that adorned Market Street, there was too many to take photos of all of 'em but here's a few that caught my eye, aren't they fabulous?

I also got to meet Westhoughton's very own town crier,

 who also happens to be a bit of a poet, here's his specially written poem in honour of the occasion, (he performed it my the Yarn Planet gazebo!):

 

WHEN YARNBOMBING

WHEN YARNBOMBING YOU DO,

TO LET YOURSELF GO,

WHY LOOK FOR THE YOU THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW,

IT'S YARN & WEAVE THE THREAD & THE STYLE,

THE COLOUR THE KNIT &THICKNESS OF PILE,

PRESENT IT WITH PASSION,

SO HOPEFULLY,

IT WILL NEVER GO OUT OF FASHION.

 

by Johnny C, 2016

 

There was also entertainment from The George Formby Society and local amateur dramatics group, The Bethel Crowd, who were on a stage very close to Planet Yarn.  There was a kids tea party too, but it was on a different site to us, so I didn't get to see that.  The theme this year was Alice in Wonderland so I also saw a few familiar characters wandering around like the Mad Hatter and Tweedledee (not sure where Tweedledum was!). 

 

The Planet Yarn collective had a lovely sunny time and I'm very much looking forward to next year's festival.  Hopefully this year I'll be able to actually contribute to the yarn bombing instead of panic preparing for my stall!  Maybe I'll see you there!