We had wanted to tie in with Lymm Historic Transport Day since we first thought of having a permanent site for a tree. However, time is very tight yet again!! So this will be a smaller 2 layer tree like the Autumn one was. We have been asked to tie in with the Lymm Rocks theme for Lymm Festival so going for Mr Men and Little Misses for the second layer.

We are currently asking for 19cm x 19cm squares in acrylic DK in sky blue, canal ‘blue’, field green, and road grey for the transport layer, and light grey / silver for the Mr Men layer.

Appliques for transport should be around the same size as a square so that they are clearly visible, and all a similar scale. Mr Men/Little Misses should be around 15cm and can be part of a light grey square.

Watch this space for an update!

The Duck Race layer hadn’t been up long last year due to us replacing it with the coronation one, so it hadn’t faded at all, had had a wash when it was taken down, and was good for re-use for the annual Easter Monday Lymm Duck Race. Easter was early this year, so we had to get going on replacement spring layers. I had an idea to do The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and then we carried on the kids theme with nursery rhymes for the other layer.

A few nursery rhymes were selected and suggested patterns posted for our super volunteers to do.

And between the three of us we did the Very Hungry Caterpillar and his ‘feast’!

Attaching to chicken wire:

Construction day (with new scaffolding):

And done:

We established when we started sewing them on that we need to be much more specific on size, and then on construction, that realistically, where our tree is, that only part of it is visible, so now know where to put things on the layout.

We were able to put the Christmas layers up from last year. Still an impressive construction. Still one of my favourites as we didn’t define what needed to be done. People just made a lovely variety of squares in the Christmassy colours. We put lights on the outside rather than shining down on it this time. Still love the lit up star at the top.

We also decided to yarn bomb the village with something new. How Rudolph survived the whole season I am not quite sure. He had been pulled at many times when I walked past and had to straighten him up.

A few of the autumn appliques that were made.

And lots of amazing poppies

I was a bit worried about just attaching these to net like we did for the Spring flowers layer, as the net would snap when moved about. So I crocheted a huge cone layer to attach them to.

I specifically wanted this to look like a cascade, and not completely cover the cone.

The Autumn layer looks amazing with lots of hedgehogs, pumpkins and leaves, and the bonfire and fireworks panel too.

We added an extra panel closer to Remembrance Sunday:

With the day of the King’s Coronation announced we decided we should do something! We decided to just change the bottom layer of the tree, as the Duck Race would have passed, and the Spring and Flower layers could stay up.

In hindsight, updating this page much later, we left those layers up for way too long and they did deteriorate in the sun at that time of year, making them not usable again. An excuse to make more?

As soon as the original Spring tree was up we put the call out for gold and purple squares and gold crown appliques, plus smaller 10cm squares in red, white and blue to create a union flag.

We now had lots of regular contributors, and a local ‘crochet gang’ who were straight on with the crowns 🙂

Chicken Wire – Sarah & Karina for scale!

And quick change:

Look at some of the amazing contributions to our first Easter / Spring Tree. It all starts with the basic squares that are needed to create the base layers.

This is going to be another 3 layer 4m tall tree, with the bottom layer being linked to the village annual Duck Race, the middle layer being ‘Spring’ in general, and the top layer a flower cascade.

Blues and Ducks:

Greens and Spring things:

And we received so many amazing flowers. Attaching these to the net was a big task!

We had a bit more idea about construction this time, so distributed the squares between us, and joined them into strips of 7 or 8. We had a session to then lay these strips out on the paper cone templates. We took photos of the layouts and took them away to join fully. We then drew the layout and how many squares are required for the bottom and middle layers that we can use for future trees.

We then needed a further session to attach the appliques to the squares, where others came to help us.

Duck applique session

Flower layer unveil – Joanne had been busy working on this at home for weeks!! It’s amazing!

Then the attaching to chicken wire. Could we remember how we did it last time?

Construction day

It is time to start thinking about our next project for Spring / Easter, and then the upcoming Coronation. Hopefully people will want to get involved in crocheting or knitting for these themes. The Duck Race / Spring & Easter / Flower Cascade. We are aiming to get this tree up in mid March.

1. The Duck Race. For this we need ~250 plain blue squares. As previously knit or crochet, in acrylic double knitting, 19cm squares. Any shades of blue, but please, just blue. As a guide I have done either 9 or 10 rounds of a standard granny square on a 4mm hook with double knitting to get this size (it has varied with different yarn). I have also tried a wavy water pattern, so feel free to experiment to make the 19cm squares.
   We also need applique style ducks in yellow to look like the ducks in the annual Easter Monday duck race. I have made up the ducks below and am thinking about trying to write out a pattern…. they are 15cm beak to tail. If you find a suitable pattern please share a link. I think these are Super Duck size, so we may want more smaller ones! We want separate squares and ducks please so we can arrange the ducks to look like the race!

Duck pattern – just do in yellow. (pattern You tube – https://youtu.be/X33SMDtRL_c)

3D Ducks – patterns can be found here. Don’t need many of these, this is a later idea and will be strung around the base of one of the hoops. Patterns | The Little Yellow Duck Project

2. Spring. Think general spring colours, light greens and yellows. We need around 200 spring green squares (same size as above), and then yellow / pink flowers, applique bunnies and chicks / eggs. EDIT to add that if you want to make a square with a spring/Easter motif within it that is fine. I just started thinking how many appliques we could have to sew on!! Happy to have both though  Some suggested pattern links:

Free Pattern: Crochet Bunny Appliqué – Bella Coco Crochet

The Crochet Blog Baby Bunny Applique FREE Crochet Pattern

3. Flower cascade. This will be the top part of the ‘tree’. We want as many bright colourful flowers as you can make. Some suggested pattern links:

5 FREE Crochet Plant Patterns – Bella Coco Crochet

Crochet Daisy | FREE Crochet Flower Pattern – Bella Coco Crochet

Crochet Flowers – Bella Coco Crochet

Pattern – Spring Daffodils | HappyBerry

4. Coronation. This is for a bit later on, but we would like 10cm squares for this (around 5 rounds of granny square). 112 red, 96 royal blue, 128 white. This is just for starters for the Coronation, there could well be more! Keep watching this space. EDIT to add to complete the layer on the tree we will be after the usual 19cm squares in Purple and Gold. Plus some crowns – pattern to follow.

We will need to reconfirm drop off points, so get started, and we will let you know where to drop them off soon. Feel free to show us your progress and share any good patterns you find (as allowed by copyright).

We may ask you to crochet or sew some together this time once we have thought about how best to join them this time – it was a huge job last time!

EDIT to add that we love ALL your contributions, but to ensure everyone gets to see their bit, could we ask that you please limit yourselves to 10 of any squares/ducks/etc for each section. If needed we will ask for more later.

Thanks everyone!

For those interested, here are some of the technical drawings of the structure behind the tree. All produced by Paul Middlehurst.

This shows the scaffold pole, and positioning of the steel hoops. The scaffold pole is positioned into 1 cubic metre of concrete. The structure was given more support for the weight of wet yarn by wrapping 2mm steel wire in a zig zag way around the hoops. The yarn cones were also fastened to chicken wire.

The different size hoops from the largest one at the bottom shown on the left. There was an additional small hoop at the top, which the lighting was fixed to as well.

I may add photos of the calculations of the cone sizes… but I did those, and they don’t look as impressive as the above drawings!!

The Lymm Tree was officially unveiled (the lights switched on, and ribbon cut) at 4.30pm on 3rd December 2022 by Chair of Lymm Parish Council Cllr Bob Barr.

Thanks to so many people for contributing to this project. The many crocheter and knitters from our local community, Kirsty at Lymm Sanctuary Hub and Business Centre for time and patience to see this through, and for 25% of our funding, Lymm Parish Council for 25% of our funding, the wonderful people of Lymm for funding the remaining 50%, which will also help towards our future projects. The Team Tree – Sarah Holland for being mad enough to suggest we try and do this, Rosie Shire, Joanne Bolton, Karina Middlehurst. Plus Paul Middlehurst for the structure, helped by Gareth at Crescent Sheet Metals, and Dave Archibald (for putting up with none stop discussion about the design and use of workshop space, and scaffold platform), and donation of metal from Graham at GM Guns in Tameside. The Spread Eagle for letting us use the function room to layout the yarn cones, Lymm Library, Lymm Radio, Tallulah Boutique and The Himos Hub for being collection points for us. Rosie’s kids, Joanne’s husband Mark and son Jack for digging and construction day. Robin, for help on construction day (and living with constant talk about the tree).

I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. This has truly been a fun project to work on and hopefully the people of Lymm enjoyed seeing it over Christmas.

Now onto the next layout – Easter!

Saturday 3rd December 2022

So the big day finally here. 8am the van loaded up and the checklist checked!

First task on site was to cut back some of the large overhanging branches which were quite high up. We put up the scaffold platform for this.

To construct the top cone we rested the scaffold pole on part of the platform and put the top 2 hoops on. The top hoop having the lights attached to it. A lesson learnt for next time to note which way the lights are facing! Leaving space for the star on the top, then measuring 1.5m down for the second hoop. Bolts greased and secured we then fastened the wire between them to support the yarn. This was a little bit harder than planned as each wire needed to be attached separately as we couldn’t pass the roll through the top hoop.

Time to attach first yarn cone 🙂

Joined the yarn cone to the top hoop with wire first, then aligning to the bottom hoop and joining up the edge. At this point I realised I had positioned it wrong, and the join would be at the front, but we decided it would still be okay. Too difficult to undo it and reattach at this point.

This was the cone that had been drawn slightly wrong, so did need a bit of stretching to fit.

And then the first string of lights was also fixed using wire, also attaching the crochet cone to the wire structure underneath. Then fixing the star in place!

Notice also the detail – wires wrapped around the arms for the lights to stop birds sitting there and pooping down the tree!!!

Time to attach the third hoop, position the fourth hoop on the ground, and get the pole and first cone up into place.

The relief at this point was amazing!!

While I had been attaching the first yarn cone to the hoops, Paul had also fixed the solar panel to the fence.

Second cone worked well. We ‘unfixed’ the scaffold pole at the bottom to allow us to spin the structure to attach the wire and the yarn cone, so we didn’t have to move the scaffold platform. We attached at the top first, then secured neatly at the bottom. Joined (at the back) and then attached the crocheted lights. Then guy ropes were affixed inside the structure.

Thanks to Sanctuary Cafe for providing teas/coffees AND breakfast barms, which kept us going!

Third section – we are getting the hang of this now!

And done by 12.30pm!