Just had confirmation that my new Ghost Bees are going to be appearing in Teignmouth Recycled Art in the Landscape, or TRAIL for short… yay!
I’ve been thinking about knitting bees for ages, almost as long as I’ve been thinking about knitting neonicotinoids for Particulart. I got as far as knitting a prototype white-bottomed bumble bee out of regular yarn. (I named it Eric Eric, on the grounds that it’s a whole bee.)
I wanted to knit bees for TRAIL out of plastic yarn (plarn) made from recycled plastic bags. But Sainsbury had got rid of their single-use orange bags (overall a Good Thing, but not helpful to me), and black bin liners tend not to be recycled often.
Then I had a brain-wave.
I’d been using charity collection bags to stuff my Particulart atoms since the beginning. Why not make the plarn from these? They’re usually white with printed logo and text. That means the bees will be white, but then they can be Ghost Bees and symbolise bees that are not – species that we have harried to extinction and colonies that have collapsed.
Perfect for TRAIL, amidst the foliage of the flower beds on the Teignmouth sea front.
Who ya gonna call? @Ghostbeesters!!