I wonder if over the years I will manage to create a small forest worth of trees made with yarn and pushpins. This latest commission brings the yarn tree mural count up to five, which is a long way from becoming a forest, but give me time (and walls).

This lovely white yarn tree now lives on the bedroom wall of clients (and good friends) living on the edge of Chinatown/Gastown. The wall is painted with blackboard paint originally intended as a background for a salon-style picture hanging idea that never came to fruition. Kay decided instead that it would be the perfect spot to commission a one-of-a-kind yarn tree.

The white yarn on black background was my client’s wonderful idea, and wow does it ever look striking. The idea was to keep the tree within the black square and have it off centre, leaving part of it to disappear out of frame as if looking through a window.

I used approximately five hundred pushpins, and one and a half balls of yarn to make this. The tree stretches to about eight feet by eight feet at its highest and widest points. For the knitters out there, I used a fine merino wool in cool white.

At the moment the tree has been left bare while my clients decide whether or not it needs leaves, flowers, or something else to decorate it.

Thank you to Ross Howard Jones for the photos, and for being such a gracious host while I worked in their home.