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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Nicola Findlay

Vandals target Lanarkshire's 'Knitting Ninjas' colourful Jubilee display

A group of 'Ninja Knitters' adorned Strathaven in red, white and blue for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee this weekend.

However, the celebration of Her Majesty's 70 years on the throne by the Strathaven Combat Crochet and Knitting Ninjas was soured by vandalism and theft of some of the colourful creations, which took hours upon hours of work.

The Jubilee coincides with the town's Gala Week and organisers can't believe that only hours after the display was put up it was targeted.

A member of the group told Lanarkshire Live: "Unfortunately since we put it up on Tuesday night it has been vandalised and two of the Queens and two of the guardsmen have been stolen.

"We anticipated some verbal criticism, as the Jubilee is not everyone's cup of tea but to deface a public art project that has had hours invested in it is despicable."

The Knitting Ninjas help spread cheer across the town and have previously created Easter displays as well as more poignant displays such as covering the town in Poppies.

They created thousands of handcrafted poppies and raised £1000 for PoppyScotland in the process.

The group member went on: "How lucky is HRH that her jubilee coincides with Gala Week!

Strathaven turned red, white and blue (Stewart Daniels)

"The Ninjas were more than happy to get the flags out. As always our thanks to Stewart Daniels for the great photos and to The Scottish Banger for his video and to all of the team who worked so hard on this project.

"We have a couple of bits still to display. Watch out for details of a selfie opportunity."

The anonymous group say some of the knitted items on display have been stolen (Stewart Daniels)

The anonymous group first began yarn-bombing the town in 2017 after being inspired by a similar event at New Lanark Heritage Village, creating pieces for Strathaven’s Gala Day.

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