To celebrate International Yarnbombing Day (6/11/11), a group of (mostly) local ladies decided to yarnbomb Acacia Park in downtown Colorado Springs. With city approval, we made several hundred squares in yellow, blue and green to put cozies on 5 of the trees in the park. I thought the organizer seemed a little worried about getting enough squares for these trees, so I volunteered to make enough squares for one tree by myself.

I was to make enough squares to cover an area 4 feet tall and 5 feet 10 inches around. Half way through it felt like I was running out of interesting squares to make! Thanks to Ravelry, I found a bunch of square patterns that were fun and interesting. By the time I finished, I could hardly wait to put it up! I added a nice ruffle to the top and bottom to finish it off nicely.

Besides the 53 squares that went into my cozy, hundreds of squares by many ladies went into the other cozies. They were randomly assembled which made my tree cozy slightly out of place as it seemed coordinated in and of itself. Mine was stuck in the middle of the trees and fit in nicely.

A few of the pieces on my cozy were real attention getters. Hello Kitty, love, and the smiley faces were a hit.

One tree had low branches crying out to be cozied and the group used the leftover squares to cover the base and branches of the tree. Even with half a dozen people working at a time, it still took an hour to cover the tree!

Because I couldn’t stop the crocheting madness, I decided to throw in a few daffodils as well. Those I stuck in the flower bed next to the trees. They (8 in all) were “planted” at 8 am. By 4:30 pm, two were “picked”. Hopefully they made it to a nice home where they will be appreciated.

The city gave approval for these cozies to be up for about two weeks. After that, they may be re-purposed as afghans and quite possibly another yarnbomb project in town. Installation was from 7:30-9:00 am. A celebration at the park was at 10 am. We finished in time to put smiles and wonder on many children’s faces.