A tight-knit community... Antrim village is recreated with wool

IT’S a Northern Ireland village — but not as you’ve ever seen it before.

After seven months of hard work Cloughmills in Co Antrim has been recreated in wool by its crochet club.

There are 35 members in the club, with ages ranging from their 40s to their 80s, and they all chipped in to create the masterpiece.

The club was started six years ago by May Aitcheson and it meets weekly for two hours from 10am to noon.

Creating the woollen village was May’s idea and the rest of the group quickly got on board.

They went out and photographed the different buildings and areas that needed to be included and went from there.

“A lady took some of us to Cushendall to see a small village they had done years ago, so I came up with the idea, but as you can see ours got larger and larger,” said May.

“The first building we created was Patton’s pub — that was the first one I did and then the Orange hall. The other ladies saw them and it went from there.”

And everyone in the group played a part in the creation.

“Some of the members did a small road or a field if they didn’t want to do a house,” May added.

“We went round the members and said ‘will you do this and will you do that’ and they all agreed.”

The club members are thrilled with the outcome.

May said: “I think it’s brilliant, but I didn’t realise it would go as far as this.

“We finally finished it last November.”

The structure is made of cereal boxes which are then covered with the crochet. May said there are a number of techniques used to create the different textures.

She said: “It’s different from knitting. You only use one nee- dle for crochet and two for knitting,” she said.

“It’s just different stitches called garter, stocking and rib. The trees were just wool wound round them.”

And while it may look like reams of wool were used and gathered to create the village, club members only used scraps.

Joint club head Maisie Millar said it was the biggest project she’d done and was looking forward to what May comes up with next. “We’ll just have to wait and see what comes up,” she added.