Yarn bombs rain on Old Town

A knitting craze that originated in Europe has hit Bermuda — and the old capital of St George’s is at the forefront of “yarn bombing”.

The move was the brainchild of the St George’s Business Association’s events committee, who enlisted artist Ami Zanders and the local knitting shop, Needles, to help out.

Michelle Wales, who owns the Conscious Vibes Café in the old town and who is a member of the association, said: “St George’s is trying to help itself and Amy, being a former St Georgian, does everything she can in terms of art to help the town.

“We aimed to bring art, colour and fun to public places. It started off as just a little project on one or two trees and grew from there.”

The movement — which started in Holland around ten years ago — involves beautifying objects on public view like trees, lamp posts and other street furniture.

It spread to the UK and the US and has boomed since then, with UK-style telephone boxes, cars and even buses having “tea cosy” style artwork adorning them.

Customers enlisted

Ms Wales said Wendy Bassett of Needles got on board and enlisted customers to knit brightly coloured “sweaters” for trees and other things in public areas, like bollards.

Ms Wales, whose café won a Best of Bermuda award this year, has some of the intricate knitwork on a tree outside her café, said: “Between Ami and Wendy, they have decorated St George’s and we’ve got a lot of positive comments from local residents and tourists.”

Bermudians also rallied to the craze by donating bags of unwanted yarn for knitters to fashion their street art.

Ms Wales added: “It’s classed as a graffiti art form – but instead of having the ugly things you see in cities, we’re doing the opposite – trying to beautify things.

“It’s another form of artistic expression and I think people like it. We are very grateful to Ami for all she had done for St George’s.”

She added she feared that some people might try to vandalise the complex designs – but was surprised to find they were mostly left alone.

Dockyard, too

Ms Wales said: “You never know how things like this will be treated – but on the whole, people haven’t interfered with them.”

Now Ms Zanders has spread yarn bombing to the opposite end of the island – with designs starting to pop up in the Dockyard area in the west.