I've been knitting cakes this week. No, I don't know why either, but it seemed like a fun, silly idea. I worked out a pattern myself which - when I eventually get around to it, I'll put on this blog. Unfortunately I haven't got round to taking any photos yet - what did I do with that camera? - so here are some felt cakes instead, so you've got something pretty to look at :-)
Well, the first time I tried knitting a coral reef (as you do!) it didn't turn out too badly. So I thought I'd have another go. This weird looking shape is the beginnings of the thing.
The previous one I made was assembled by using a cane basket for a base, but I improvised this time with a cut up cereal box. I formed it into a shallow dish shape and covered that in bubble wrap. Then covered that in turquoise fabric.
This is the back of the base, with the fabric gathered up and roughly stitched in place, ready for the knitted coral to be attached. It'll all come right in the end, I'm sure, but at the moment it looks like bizarre. Anyway, on to other matters: I'm halfway through Steven Galloway's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' which is making me ashamed of how patchy my knowledge of 20th century European history is. The destruction of Sarajevo made so little impact on me at the time, though it was hardly any distance away from England, just a short plane ride away. One of the good things about being in a book group is that it can introduce you to fiction you wouldn't normally pick up off the shelf. It's always good too to hear the range of views about a book - no two readers seem to react in the same way. I was scanning my bookshelves the other day, and there are so many books I want to re-read - from 'Wuthering Heights' to 'Jane Eyre', 'The Poisonwood Bible' (loved that!) and lots of Dickens and Austen, Judy Budnitz and Margaret Attwood. I really need to have a year when I don't buy any new books but just concentrate on the novels I already own. Maybe that could be my project for 2010?
I've been seeing fabulous photos of crocheted coral and some knitted pieces too, and really wanted to have a go myself. So I played around with shapes and colours, and - ta da!!
It's not perfect - not even near perfect! - but I was still pretty pleased with it. It's been assembled by using a small cane basket. I've stretched bubble wrap over the back of the basket, then covered it in turquoise material. The knitted coral pieces are sewn on and quite closely pushed together. The surface is supposed to be dense and have lots of interesting shapes to peer at. I'm going to make a larger piece, so am on the lookout for more wool, especially unusual textures so I'll be haunting charity shops and the bargain boxes in wool shops.
It's a Bank Holiday, so I've got a day off work. I've been catching up on some knitting and in particular assembling some bunting. This is an experiment with little knitted monsters - one eyed creatures with big gnashing teeth! They're suspended on ric rac. I was thinking of making a variation of these - aliens rather than monsters, so using green wool and the odd metallic silver.
When I'm done with the bunting there are plenty of other bits and pieces to finish off, and something good to watch on the telly too - I taped last night's hour & a half of 'Wuthering Heights'. It's such an amazing book, I'm hoping that it's a decent adaptation. There've been a few turkeys in their time (I'm not even going to mention Cliff Richards as Heathcliff. Eeeuch!). Bronte wrote such a weird, wonderful, compelling novel - so unusual for the age in which she lived - that I'd always recommend it to anyone who's just watched a film or TV version. You need to read the prose to really appreciate the story.
A crafty corner of the sitting room, always home to a jumble of knitting, needlepoint and felt softies. Oh, to have a tidy home!
I went out for a Sunday morning cycle today, armed with a bag of knitted cozies and the idea of attaching at least one to something. Then I behaved like a complete wuss and almost lost my nerve. Everytime I delved in my bag for a cozy or a cable tie, a jogger/dogwalker/cyclist appeared. Who knew there were so many neon lycra clad cyclists around on an overcast Sunday morning! I keep telling myself to just ignore them and attach my knitting anyway. So what if they see me ... they'll just think I'm a nutty old bag, an eccentric Englishwoman ... but I haven't reached that point yet and still want to yarnstorm anonymously. But at last I found a quiet couple of minutes and attached this little fella to a glossy black post. I think this second photo is so funny.
Somehow the left side of the picture has distorted so it looks as though the railings are bendy.
I don't know how those graffiti sprayers work up the nerve to produce some of the elaborate sprayworks they do. (I'm not talking about the idiots who just write f**k in huge letters, but the proper artists who have a lot of talent.) Do they go out at night? Or just get up very, very early in the morning? Cos that doesn't sound like any teenager I know!
I sneakily tied a little piece of knitting to the pipe on a water tank at the allotments the other evening. Strange but true!!
Here it is - with some lovely hollyhocks in the background. I wonder if anyone else has noticed it yet.
Another view of the knitted cozy.
On the home front I'm knitting a scarf - this on a beautifully warm sunny day! But by the time I get it finished it'll be autumnal. I'm not sure how to make up the scarf - whether to back it with a silky fabric or to fold it lengthways and have a narrow skinny scarf. In the meantime I'm just enjoying using every colour of wool I can get my hands on.
I'm still knitting my weird version of sea coral. So far the pieces are quite small so I want to scale up and make some bigger versions. Can't find any patterns for coral or sea anemones online, knitted ones at least, there are lots of crochet forms, so I'm just coming up with my own.
Really lovely wool - those sumptuous Rowan silks and mohairs are so expensive, but luckily a lot of charity shops have odd balls of interesting colours and textures. I might also try some genteel begging at my next book group meeting and see if any donations can be found!
Apart from knitting, I've been doing my usual internet browsing, and have something weird to
recommend. If you go to www.tinyurl.com/mnharb you get the strangest thing. It's a mash-up of Nirvana 'Smells like teen spirit' and Rick Astley singing 'Never gonna give you up'. It's so funny. Bizarre but oddly compelling.
Finally ... yesterday I checked on a couple of yarn cozies I stuck up a week or two ago. (Losing track of time!!) One I'd attached to some railings has gone, so whether a council cleaner disposed of it or a knitting collector nabbed it I don't know. But the other cozy was still there, sitting proudly on top of a fence post. It looks really good with the rusty colour of the post and the greenery in the background. I'm so happy it's still in place!
I treated myself to a couple of goodies the other day. One was Knit1, a lovely magazine with some really interesting patterns and features in it, including ones on Freddie Robins and Diva Zappa. It always feels very indulgent to spend money on magazines - this one was £4.95, but you need a treat now and again, don't you?
The other goodie I bought was a book of Julie Arkell's work. She's such an inspiring artist, and her work appears simple and naive but it's actually rather sophisticated - and definately beautiful. I'm looking forward to putting aside some time to read the book thoroughly.
I've also been knitting some odds and ends like this little piece with plain and purl rows of stripes.
There're 3 buttons to fasten this around an unsuspecting lamp post or street sign post. Just gotta be sneaky and fix it in place ...
I bought 'Knitorama' about 6 months ago, Rachael Matthews zany book of '25 Great & Glam Things to Knit'. If you haven't come across it, the book features such fab projects as knitted fried egg earmuffs, ham sandwiches, even a knitted hand grenade. I rustled up a couple of knitted cabbages, and have been wondering what to do with 'em ever since!
Here you can just about make out a mini cabbage nestling among the rocket and thyme on the windowsill.
Anyway, with my new interest in 'yarn bombing' I had an idea: I'm going to attach them to the noticeboard at the allotments where I've got my plot. I thought that was an appropriate home for them. Allotments always look eccentric anyway, with their bathtubs for rainwater and cobbled together sheds and bird scarers that consist of CDs strung on lines of string. I reckon my cabbages should fit in beautifully!
I've been thinking for ages about a knitting project I'd like to do, and finally the idea's coming together. I love the whole 'urban knitting' movement, 'yarn bombing', 'guerilla knitting' or whatever you care to call it. Also, I love knitting but it's more the process of knitting than the end result I like. It's the stitches, the choice of colours and different textures. I like making simple shapes like rectangles or long strips of wildly clashing yarns.
So anyway, I've decided to be a big, brave girlie and put some knitting out there in the urban landscape. Probably as part of the Totterdown art trail which happens in - I think - November this year. I took part last year, selling felt food softies, but fancy doing something a bit different this time.
So I've been knitting pieces with button fastenings to wrap around fence posts or traffic sign posts. Here are some that I've draped around my arm to show you.
And here's another piece. I want to attach labels to these pieces, and I really like the idea of the label having a piece of text written on it - a paragraph from a novel or a poem. I want to just pick pieces at random from various authors, from different genres, so people move from one knitted cosy to another reading the labels. So one might have an excerpt from a Georgette Heyer novel attached to it, another might have a bit from Dickens, another could use a quote from Agatha Christie. Well, that's the plan so far. Let's see how I get on!!
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