evidence

Photo credit: My P, aka binaryape on Flickr, took this photo the other day, on his way to work. I’ve also been stepping over the spill of pins on my way to the office, and yesterday I stopped resisting the temptation to pick them up. A few years ago, my then joint managers gave me some strong magnets as a Xmas present (I was covering over the holiday period, and not only did they feel a bit guilty, but they are both nice, gift-giving types, and knew I would love the magnets) which I usually use to hold a phone list to my in-trays. The magnets are very good for picking up pins as well.

When I first saw the spill, I thought someone had just dropped a new box of pins, possibly someone in the garment industry that still exists locally, even if it couldn’t be described as thriving. However, closer investigation shows that the pins are actually a mix of different types of pins and needles, more like a collection than a fresh box of supplies. Though it could still be from a professional, I suspect the pins may have been dropped by someone more like me, a craft enthusiast, who experienced a supplies box failure while walking down the street, maybe to go to a sewing course or something like that. Or it could have been a student.

Anyway, I now have a collection of dirty, rusted and/or bent pins and needles, plus some possibly usable ones. Why would I want them? Well, recently we re-watched the Street of Crocodiles, and it made me want to make spooky dolls, using bits of wire and old light bulbs. (As an aside, another of the shorts on that CD featured using magnets, and now I’m wondering if that’s what linked the two things in my mind?) The pins would be excellent for that type of thing. And until I get around to that, they don’t add that much to my piles of stuff to craft with. Not really. Honest.

Moles Bowls Goals

I've been using Joe's Goals for a month now, and, well, it's nice. I like how simple it is, and I am the sort of person who can be motivated by putting a green tick on a form. Yes, a bit sad, maybe a bit neurotic, but it gives a certain satisfaction to know that in the past month I've managed to work on the secret project 12 times. It also produces a low level of panic about finishing the project on time.

I'm toying with the idea of using Joe's Goals to track what I'm starting to call my 40 Things Year. Next year I'll be 40. To celebrate, I'm trying to come up with 40 things to do 40 times, like do 40 sketch crawls, or 40 evenings reading in bed. I've not come up with the full 40 yet, but I hope to get it worked out and in the goals list for the end of the year. (Part of me is saying I should check out other goal tracking aps, but I'm just ignoring that, because checking out aps is not my idea of fun.)

As part of my effort to get a good start on next year, I really want to finish off 5 of my current projects THIS YEAR:

1. The Secret Project, which is taking up most of my bus crafting time at the moment, making this blogging business a bit more difficult because it's a secret!


2. Mending the Make do and Mend bag


3. That clanger- armature, clothes and everything


4. The wire storage baskets- one is mostly done but I've started on 3 others that are storing nothing at the moment


5. A story about a mermaid, a rough draft at the moment that needs to be thrown away and rewritten from scratch

I often get to the point where I feel burdened by a project, I'll start to refer to it as an albatros. None of these five are at that stage yet, but I'm not totally enthused by any of them either. But I do want to have them done. And I'm curious, can I finish all five by 31 December?

 

 

No lo se nada

I went to see Miguelanxo Prado's talk about his work as a comic artist. It was a learning experience. I didn't know what the site meant when it said the event would be in Spanish with simultaneous translation. What it means, is that you wear headphones with a broadcast from a translator at the back of the room, like at the UN. I figured that out when it dawned on me that the speakers were only using Spanish, and a sizeable part of the audience was wearing headphones. By that time, I felt too awkward to go over to the wine table and explain that I need the headphones. Yes, I am that silly. I did understand the bit at the start about Altimira, and the bit at the end about the importance of the gap between frames, but I totally missed the Margaret Thatcher joke.

I was impressed by Mr Prado's enthusiasm for comics. No translation needed for that.

Review of the Mending Project and other stuff at the Liverpool Biennial

Lovely!

With encouragement from P and colleagues at the office, I took the afternoon off last Wednesday so I could go to the Mending Project while Lee Mingwei was there. He was doing the work only for the first two weeks of the biennial, and because I wasn’t organized on the weekends, I had to take an afternoon off at short notice. I had seen a piece about it on the local news (thanks to P) and was very excited about it. Possibly so excited that I was driving other people crazy talking about how I wanted to go, but I had a lot to do at the office, but it would be such a shame to miss it, etc.; and that could be the reason people were so encouraging for me to just go already!

It took me a while to decide which garment I wanted to have mended. The jumper I’d been wearing at work until I finally notice a huge hole in the arm? The denim jacket I’ve treasured since a friend gave it to me in college? The striped shirt in my current mending pile? Yes, I could continue listing my clothes with holes for quite a while.

I finally decided on a tan shirt, which I remember my mom buying at a garage sale because it looked warm. This may be a false memory, or a mash up of two different incidents, but anyway, I’ve had the shirt a while. It’s difficult to describe why I like it- it’s a synthetic, and a rather dull tan, but I like the way it hangs in a sort of saggy way. There were two little holes in the back which I had tried to mend years ago, but I gave up wearing it when I noticed another little hole in the front. When Lee Mingwei saw it, he sort of teased me that no one would notice the hole when I was wearing it, but he understood how since I knew it was there, I would feel like everyone would notice. It made me reflect that I usually only notice people’s clothes when it’s something I like. His mending with bright threads forming a tassel will definitely be noticed.

He asked me if I was an artist and I rather awkwardly explained how I didn’t think of myself that way. I asked how he felt about someone else taking over working in the project next week. He said that the sharing of the project was part of it, he’s enthused about the other people participating in it, ‘I told them, once you sit here, it’s your project.’ He didn’t use the term control freak, but making the project open to others is a positive part of his whole idea of the Mending Project.  It reminded me of the open source software ethos. Though the Mending Project uses thread and fabric, it is much more about ideas: involvement, making contact and giving, creating value.

I also asked how he had selected the threads for the project. A friend at the office said they were like a rainbow on the walls of the workspace. Turns out, he had ordered them as a selection pack!

I strongly encourage anyone to go to the Mending Project while it is in Liverpool, and do take a garment to be mended, have a chat with whichever artist is there, and just enjoy participating. I found it quite inspiring, and I’m wondering if I could do a similar sort of thing by returning the lost buttons I’ve been collecting.

If you do go to the Mending Project, let me know if you see my old tan shirt there. When I pick it up at the end of the show, I will start wearing it to the office again, so plenty of people will get a chance to see it as I sit on the bus.

While in Liverpool, I went along to some of the other pieces in the biennial. Lots are video installations, which aren’t really my thing (perhaps I’m too impatient for them). I liked Bridging Home by Do Ho Suh, and there’s lots of graffiti in that area, too. For fabric enthusiasts, and for anyone else really, Ndize by Nicholas Hlobo at the Bluecoat is just a brilliant experience. The intricate work on the rubber and ribbon outfits appeals to my fabric senses, but walking through the maze of ribbons in the room upstairs, well, I just don't have the words to describe it. Sensual, beautiful, and just a little bit scary.

On a crafting note, I made progress on the Secret Project on the train, but that’s all I’m saying. It’s  bad enough that P knows there is a Secret Project.

Headphones Covered

Finished project report! I'm quite pleased with my knitted headphone covers. It was a good experimental knitting project, figuring out how to make the covers and then doing it again and again to get it right. Because it was a trial and error process, at first I didn't think it would be worthwhile to blog the instructions. And besides, just how many people with old headphones would want to knit new covers for them? But then I realized that the knitted covers are a nice way to personalize a mass produced item, and plenty of knitters would like to do that. Even if the instructions for my covers don't work perfectly for someone else's headphones, it would be a place to start. So, here's the tutorial:

Covers for Sony Dynamic Studio Headhones MDR-V300 using 2 1/2 mm knitting needles and a bit of organic cotton yarn

Cast on 58 stitches. Knit a row, then purl a row for 13 rows. (Some people call this stocking stitch, but there seems to be different ways of counting rows of ss. Your headhone covers may need more or less rows to cover- it took me 3 tries to get a good fit.)

Start decreasing. Depending on if your last row was a knit or a purl, do the oposite and purl or knit 9 stitches, then two together, then another 9 stitches, then another two together, until you finish the row. My rows finished with 3 stitches after the last two together stitch. So on the next row, I started with 3 stitches, then 2 together then 8 stitches. This will all vary by size and tension, but here is what I ended up doing:
Row 14: knit 9, knit 2 together,knit 9, knit 2 together, knit 9, knit 2 together, knit 9, knit 2 together, knit 9, knit 2 together, knit 3
Row 15: purl 3, purl 2 together, purl 8, purl 2 together, purl 8, purl 2 together, purl 8, purl 2 together, purl 8, purl 2 together, purl 8
Row 16: knit 7, knit 2 together, repeat to end of row which will be just 3 knit stitches
Row 17: purl 3, purl 2 together, purl 6, repeat to end
Row 18: knit 5, knit 2 together, repeat to end which will be just 3 knit stitches
Row 19: purl 3, purl 2 together, purl 4, repeat to end
Row 20: knit 2 together for entire row
Cast off, leaving a thread long enough to sew up the edges and gather round the ear piece. Check it against the ear piece. It should fit over with just a bit of stretching. If it doesn't fit, note down what to try different and pull it out and start over.

If it does fit, start the sewing up with the thread left at the end, then put the cover on the ear piece to sew it over the wires, then continue the thread around the outer edge gathering it to fit. Tie it off to the thread at the start of the piece and trim or tuck in the ends. Put them on, plug them in and play some good tunes.

Now, that's the way I've done it, but I have a feeling there's loads of tweaks and improvements that could be made. I'm not that great at knitting, so adding patterns, ruffles, tassells, etc. is a bit beyond me, but the headphone covers as an idea could definitely be taken further. Or, the covers can be simple and functional, like mine.

So, for the analysis:

The good: The covers have made the headphones usable again, which is nice. And I do like the way they are 'peronalized' now.

The bad: Because this project sat in my to-do pile so long (and by that I do mean years), P has new headphones and so doesn't need these now.

The ugly: I am a bit bothered by the way the casting off stitches stand up. This is probably due to my awkwardness in casting off rather than the pattern itself.

 

Review of Hat Works Decade Parade

Though I don't consider myself a hat person, I do like to go to the exhibits at the Hat Works. Yes, some of my enjoyment is just because I can go on there on my lunch break, taking a break from sitting at a desk all day. However, they do put on some inspiring stuff, and I always come away with ideas to try in my own crafting.

The current show (on until 28 November 2010) is a competition to celebrate their 10th anniversary. I have no idea how they came up with the idea of a miniature hat competition- it's not what would have sprung to my mind. But the show is full of interesting fabric sculpting ideas, so I'm very glad they put it on.

I actually went to the show before going on vacation, but because I couldn't remember the makers' names, I went back last week and MADE NOTES! So, now I can blog without making constant apologies for missing people's names.

I'm just putting down what caught my eye, what I want to remember for my own crafting projects, but really, I want to thank everyone who participated in the show. It's packed with clever, quality work, and I feel like seeing such a variety of work helps me understand more about what I'm personally interested in. (Does that sound totally self-centered, or only moderately self-centered?)

• Molly Bunce is the competition winner in the professional strand. Lots of what I would call fabric manipulation- making little bundles tied around what I assume are cut out shapes or bits of stuffing. Very interesting, organic shapes, reminds me of lichen. I'm wondering if it can be applied to quilting.


• Judith Flack's Le Souk features wonderfully frayed rolls of hand dyed fabric.


• Recycled Haberdashery by Ruth McGarry has what looks like a hessian base, a surprising choice for a feminine hat but I really liked it. Her fabric flowers with the blue yarn centers really caught my eye, and obviously I liked the recycled aspect or the piece.


• I'm also thinking about using something like the little bouquets stuffed into fabric folds in Vernoica Hartley's Contrasts in a quilt. It reminds me of the encrusted crazy quilting Sharon B does, perhaps because of all the rich colour and texture.


• Using the edge of braid/ribbon to build up a shape, Lorna Muir's Dansette looks so clever. I've wondered about something similar with folds of fabric, and her work made me realise how it would work.


• I adore the flower on Striped Suprise by Laura Hankey. The petals are of two pieces of fabric, sewn, turned, stitched down. I've seen similar, simpler flowers as quilt embellishments (my google-fu is too weak to find it again), but the one on the hat had loads of petals, inner ones plain red and larger outer ones in a blue stripe fabric! I wouldn't have thought of striped fabric for petals, and it looks so good!


• The woven ribbons on Maureen Brook's Buttons, bits and bobs makes me want to play with the ribbons I've collected over the years. My ribbon box is too full to close completely. Perhaps I should do a piece of weaving just to tidy things up.

Legs! Brilliant!!!

I was knitting on the bus this morning, and I overheard a kid talking to a friend. "I don't know how you'd get there. Oh, you could walk! Because you have legs!"

I am so mature, that I concentrated on the knitting until they got off to go to school. Then I started giggling. Makes me glad to have legs.

On the way home, a bit of a faux pas. I didn't realize the older lady getting on the crowded bus really did need to sit. Luckily, a woman sitting behind me did realize and gave up her seat. Feel like I didn't read the situation as well as I should have.