We are excited to be part of the new Lymm Community Garden at Lymm Sanctuary Hub and Business Centre. They have enabled us to find a place to put our tree and get the relevant permissions. Please help us fundraise for the costs of our tree, AND the new Community Garden. We have a sub fundraising page for anyone specifically wanting to donate to the tree costs, but please also consider supporting the bigger project.

Karina Middlehurst is fundraising for Lymm Sanctuary Hub (justgiving.com) (Lymm Tree specific)

Lymm Community Garden – JustGiving (whole community garden project)

The Lymm Tree is an exciting piece of community artwork to be located in the new Community Garden at the Lymm Sanctuary Hub and Business Centre. Please can you help us to fundraise to support this exciting community space in Lymm.

Following the successful Jubilee Yarn Bomb in the village, and the positive response to the crowns and guards we would now like to do something on a much greater scale that will bring even more attention and fun to Lymm Village.

Last year a village in Devon created a yarn Christmas Tree, and we would like to create The Lymm Tree.

 It will be approximately 4m tall and a 2m diameter at the bottom, made up of hundreds of crochet / knitted squares, supported on a steel and wire structure, with a concrete base in the ground.

Initially the aim is for this to be a Christmas tree, but we aim to build on this and change the theme over the seasons to support other events in Lymm.  For example cascading poppies for Remembrance, ducks at Easter in line with the Duck Race, boats / cars for Historic Transport Day, general linkage to the canal.  The three part modular structure will give us flexibility for other seasonal theme formats.

This has already begun as a real community project with many crafters of all ages contributing their squares to the project.  

See more about our progress by joining our Facebook group Lymm Yarn Bomb

28th November 2022

We have had a few discussions about the lighting.. We don’t have access to power, and part of the attraction of this to the community garden, which also involves Low Carbon Lymm and LEAF, was that it would use solar power.

Facebook must have ‘heard’ this, as I was getting LOTS of ads for solar powered lights, as were the others in our group. However, there were concerns that these would not be bright enough. I was given demonstrations of different ‘lumens’ and persuaded that whatever Paul could make would be better!!

Another concern we had was where they will be placed and the risk of vandalisation (sad to say).

The LED spotlights will be fixed by metal arms to the top hoop on the tree shining down, along with a smaller light shining up on the star (this was another late decision).

I currently have a solar panel being tested for its output in my dining room, to see if it will be enough to power the lights in winter, and 12V batteries being charged. Some old toys have been chucked out of a Really Useful Box (I should have shares – they really are useful for storage and we have loads!), ready for the electronics and battery to be kept in under the tree.

Electronics are still being worked on – currently waiting for the timer to arrive! The idea is that the lights will be on from when it goes dark for about 7 hours (4-11pm), and then a motion sensor after that, in case anyone comes near the tree, which will be behind a locked, but low, fence. There is CCTV on the side of the business centre building, but no light, so something is needed for CCTV to be of any use in the dark.

And the star for the top of the tree. I just crocheted a five point star out of some glittery wool I had (I needed more, so a visit to Black Sheep Wool was involved!), and then Paul cut some metal to the right size and shape. Then made a collar for it to sit very snuggly on top of the scaffold pole. He has had a very busy week finishing these things for us!

24th November 2022

After digging the hole, we still needed to wait for written permission for the concrete to go in, but finally the day arrived!

Shoring has been added around the hole, to be removed when dried, to ensure neat edge. The tube for the scaffold pole to go into has had spokes welded to it for strength in the concrete, and so the scaffold pole doesn’t sink.

And then with the concrete

Now with the wood removed:

6th October – 21st October. Painting 9th -11th November 2022

The hoops have been finished by Paul at Gareth’s workshop.

This involved machining the collars for the centre of each hoop that will be secured to the scaffold pole. From solid steel cylinder:

Welding the hoops already made to the radials and the centre collars:

And now ready to clean them up and start the painting,

With me for scale!

Huge thanks to Paul, and Gareth and Dave for use of their workshops!!

19th November 2022

We had a few delays getting going here. We are extremely grateful to Lymm Sanctuary Hub and Business Centre for including us in their plans for the Lymm Community Garden, and for obtaining the necessary approvals for this to go ahead.

I marked out the hole for the base on Friday, ready for the team to dig on Saturday morning.

In progress

Thanks to Mark and Jack Bolton for digging the hole, and Joanne for supervising. A super tidy job!

19th November 2022

We started by laying out chicken wire over the middle cone shape to work out how much was needed and how many strips of chicken wire needed to be joined together. Fortunately the cone shape fitted on just 2 widths of the chicken wire. We joined the strips together with wire ties, then lay on top of the paper cone to cut the chicken wire to the cone shapes.

After that we lay the middle cone squares over the chicken wire, and stretched to fit. We joined the squares to the chicken wire around the edges first with wire ties, then turned it over and joined every other square(ish) to secure them together.

I had spotted an error in one of the figures on my top cone, so we only completed the bottom and middle cone here. I could just about manage to fit the top cone on the floor at home later!

Showing the strips and squares pinned together, and some of the variety in size of the squares. It is a good job yarn is quite ‘forgiving’. We came up with a term squish and stretch to make some fit together!

Me messing about!

5th November 2022

So last time we met up we distributed the lovely squares between the 3 of us, making sure we all had a mixture of colours and designs, plain and fancy etc. For the lower 2 cones we had estimated strips of 7 squares, and for the top cone strips of around 9 squares. I think each of us crocheted together 15 strips of 7 and either 2 or 4 of 9. That’s a total of 334 joins, 387 squares, with quite a lot of spares. That’s 63.46m of crochet joins!!

Karina’s strips in progress:

Rosie’s strips in progress, and Sarah’s ready for the next stage.

We next met up to lay the strips out on the cone shapes drawn out last time to set the correct layout to fit the steel structure. We mixed up the strips to try and make sure we didn’t have similar squares next to each other.

The strips obviously didn’t perfectly fit to the cone shapes, so we had to split a few strips back up, and add many single squares around the outside to fit the shape more closely. Strips were pinned together, then rolled up for each of us to take one ‘cone’ home to crochet together. In hindsight this didn’t work very well – we didn’t pin anywhere near enough squares and when I unrolled mine, the strips got really twisted, but thanks to the photos taken, we all managed to figure out the layouts we had and crochet them together….. Ready for the next meet up!!

Many thanks to The Spread Eagle in Lymm for letting us use the function room to lay this out. Perfect space!

The large cone has 24 strips 205 squares (approximately 240 more joins (1 side of a square), with the additional squares added to the strips). The middle cones has 17 strips 149 squares (155 more joins). The top cone has 10 strips 95 squares (90 more joins). Total of 449 squares. Another 92.15m of crochet joins, giving a total of 155.6m of double crochet joining we have done between us. No more dc for us for a while!!! It took us a couple of weeks to join the strips ready for the next meetup – the chicken wire stage!!

8th October 2022

I did the maths a while ago to go with the steel circle design. I just hope it is right!!!

We met to lay out paper on the floor and create the circle sections required to make the cone shapes, so we know how to join the squares together.

It was over 2 hours of crawling on the floor (my knees haven’t forgiven me yet!!), but we can now visualise the huge task ahead!!

We have sorted and distributed the squares to initially be crocheted together in strips. Once those are done, we will lay out the strips on the prepared cone shapes and arrange them for the strips to be crocheted together.

Still need to finish the steel structure and paint it, and get the chicken wire cut to the cone shapes too. It’s getting exciting.

29th September 2022

The structure is made up of different diameter 10mm steel circles around a scaffold pole. Essentially 3 cone / part cone shapes that the crocheted squares will go around, supported further on chicken wire.

From 6 x 6m steel bars, cut, and put through a roller, and welded, to the hoops for the tree. Thanks to Crescent Sheet Metal for letting Paul use your workshop. Lots more to be done but it’s coming along now.

Some photos of the steel bar being bent to the circles, and the radials also cut ready for the next stage:

Many thanks are owed to Crescent Sheet Metal for allowing Paul to use their workshop.