Setting up for the Degree Show

 

 The first instalment of three: all we could safely get in the car.

Even then, the rod for the biggest glove was snuggling up to the windscreen.

The big glove, and the one we call Matilda'.

One of the twins, and the small black one.

Six more to go, unless I don't show all of them.

Still trying to find a workable blog posting app to replace Bloggsy. Why does Blogger make it so hard to post on an iPad?

 

 

 

 

Two weeks gone...

but not much to show for it.

Apart from a new car, but that didn't require much effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As one of those weeks was half term, we went to Manor Farm, which did take effort, but was productive in terms of pleasure and information gained, if nothing else. (I now know how a milking machine works, and, more importantly, so does the VHC. He is very keen on knowing how things work.)

Manor Farm now has a mechanical cow, which I think the kids like almost as much as the real thing.

 

 

But in terms of Uni work, despite a lot of knitting, the ^?< €<*} present glove seems to be taking longer than any of the others, despite being shorter. I know that this is because it is much wider, covered in cables, and 'only' Aran weight wool, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. I was hoping to finish it today, I even began to cast off, but I've just tried it against the armature and it really isn't long enough. I feel a bit pressurised because it's Crits next week, and I was hoping to have a finished, complete with skeleton, glove to show, but that's not gonna happen. I think I'm still on track to have 'enough' to show in the Degree Show, but 'enough' may be 7 rather than 9.

Can you see the non-deliberate mistake? I intended to make 'mistakes', but this was a real one, a row of cables all crossed the wrong way. But these gloves are all about life's changes, and sometimes life does cross your cables wrong...

I did find time to make a couple of junk books. I got bored with the hand theme, and instead picked up Alisa Golden's 'Making Hand-Made Books' and experimented with some of her suggestions. .

 

 

Updating: knitting, Advent decorations, and hands

Still knitting...

I think it will be about 3 metres long before I run out of wool. Then I shall have to start thinking about buttons - those little bumps you can see at regular intervals on the right side of the cuff are buttonholes. Fifty four of them and counting. I have a lot of buttons - I inherited 3 women's button boxes - but probably not enough of the right size and colour (whatever that is) even if I don't worry about them being all the same. I suspect EBay will be my friend.

 I've also got round to making another Advent decoration. I was sure she was going to end up a complete disaster, and I did make two bodices, two skirts and two pairs of wings, but in the end I quite like her. (Her wings aren't really wonky, though, and it reall life they curl back elegantly, as the sequin waste was on a roll.)

.         

And I've been playing around with a pleasing discovery in a Staples sale bin. Half a dozen disembodied hands.

Photograph them and app them with Flip-o-matic and you get lovely patterns. (Flip-o-matic always sounds to me like some thing Gromit invented.)

The most entertaining part of the week, for my audience but not me, was me trying to scan my hands. (It might have been even more entertaining if I'd tried to scan other parts of my anatomy, but hands were a big enough challenge for one day.)  I wanted to scan to Big Mac (copying would have been too easy!) which is about two feet to the left of the scanner: getting them closer isn't feasible.

Scanning my right hand was relatively easy. Except that the overview scan kept cutting off my finger tips, so I had to adjust it, using the mouse with my left hand. Fine tuned click and drag it wasn't.

Scanning my left hand involved crossing my arms. It dawns on me now that as it's a wireless mouse I could have moved it - but I would still have had to turn to the left to see the screen, even after I'd remembered that I could rotate to see it better. 

I couldn't solve the other problems:

1. My hand getting flattened on the platen, so it looks quite squelchy on the scans. (Good job I didn't try other parts of my anatomy...)
2. Not being able to get the back of my hand flat to the glass, so my thumbs are just shadows on the scans.

However, a bit of playing around with my favourite app, iColorama, and I got some passable results. My hands aren't really this wrinkly, honest.

Can you spot the (not so) deliberate mistake?

Not these. These were not mistakes. Weird, but not mistakes. Even the unfinished yarn ends which have felted together are deliberate. 

I may have shown you the left hand one before, but I've felted it a bit more since then. It was originally a tree with hands for branches. Now it's a glove with gloves for fingers, and has therefore, become the first of my unwearable gloves series. The glove on the right was intended to be unwearable right from the start. It was going to have a long tail (knit till the wool runs out) but I got bored and added a frill (increase in every stitch till the wool runs out). The result makes me think of a hand growing out of a brain. I am seriously beginning to wonder what is lurking in my subconscious and what will come out next. Especially because of what did happen next...

You may have noticed that all my samples so far have been made in neutral colours - because I was thinking of skin tones. However I've been pondering on using colour - after all, they are gloves, not hands. Or are they?

I wasn't sure what colour, but when I came across a big skein of  red yarn in a charity shop, I grabbed it. It felt like wool, and £4.50 for 800 grammes was a bargain. I like red, and I'd been very impressed by Louise Bourgeois' paintings of red hands at Southampton Art Gallery last month.

Of course, because it was a skein, I had to get out my swift and nostepinne. I know I shouldn't set up the swift in this ramshackle way, (that's not the deliberate mistake), but the stool is the only thing I can clamp it to. It actually reminds me of this. 

The image of the yarn on the swift is a more accurate colour than the others.

I thought I would only wind off about half of it to begin with, but I had a comfortable chair, I was enjoying the process, and I just kept going. It made me realise how important to me it is that I do these things by hand, in the old way. Wooden tools are nice too. But I don't think my foremothers had Radio 3 to keep them company.

I knitted a tiny sample and washed it - yup, it's wool - and started a glove. It wasn't going to be an unwearable glove, but one of a Louise Bourgeois inspired pair. But when I'd finished it and was sewing in the ends I realised this had happened.

I knew the stitch count was off when I got to the fingers, but just thought I'd miscalculated. Obviously my subconscious was telling me to stick with the unwearable gloves...

Weeks 27 & 28: Glovelier and Glovelier

Weeks 27 & 28: Glovelier and Glovelier.

It is, by my calculations, 4 weeks until we put up the exhibition which, for the part-timers, is the final part of this year's course. (Where the heck did that year go?) By now, I should be coasting gently towards the end, finishing off pieces for exhibition, making sure my supporting portfolio is up to date, and planning for a well earned break.

Am I? What do you think? 

I spent the first semester procrastinating by pretending to be working on the essay, but since the switch from trees to gloves, I keep having ideas. And I keep having tutorials in which other people make interesting suggestions. And I keep following them up. So that small but beautifully formed body of work which I thought I was going to produce (ha!) is, in reality, a collection of unfinished bits and bobs reflecting a series of wild goose chases.

For example, I think I mentioned the suggestion that I bought a lot of cheap gloves and used them to explore ideas. I started sewing them together without really thinking about it, and ended up with a short tube, which I didn't think I wanted, until I'd unpicked it. (Unpicking tight black stitches in black gloves in dim light is not a good idea and resulted in frayed cuffs and tempers.) (I've just read the previous sentence, and think I should make it clear that I wasn't wearing the gloves. That would be silly.)

Then I decided that a tube was probably a good idea, so I had to start again. The trouble is that sewing magic gloves together is both boring and difficult, which leaves to procrastination. Such as blog writing.

Here is the tube in progress on the right, and the remaining gloves on the left. Unless I decide I want a longer tube, in which case it is about half the remaining gloves. Then I have to decide whether I want an erect column of gloves, or a hanging cylinder, and go and consult one of our excellent technicians about how to achieve it.

My tutor suggested that I tried stuffing one of the gloves with fleece, and shrank it. So I did. I think you can probably work out which is the shrunk one. Interesting, but I don't think I'm going to stuff 4 or 5 dozen gloves with fleece, unless someone has one to spare - and even then I don't think I've got time or a big enough washing machine...

I had another tutorial last week - we are encouraged to book tutorials with all the members of staff.  I was enthusing about Louise Bourgeois's wonderful bronze hands - and was told to try copying them. Apparently copying is good, and trying to be original isn't, which was a bit of a surprise.

So here are two Bourgeois knock-offs. The single hand has yet to be felted, and will join two or three others. They are slightly more expressive than I expected, but somehow I don't think I'm going to be able to pass them off as genuine. 

And finally, some small gloves for an enlarged version of this. 

On a good night, I can make two of these, but looking at them in the photo I think I'm going to need a lot more than nine. Better get those needles clacking...

Week 23

I knew I hadn't posted for a while, but I didn't realise it was quite this long! My excuse is that what I was calling a chest infection turned out to be flu, because just like almost everyone else who had the jab, I still caught it. And I still have the cough, sniffles and occasional wheezing. And no energy.

I have been getting into Uni, where  we had a special visitor.

I managed to escape extermination, and after a couple of tutorials, the trees have been replaced with hands - or possibly gloves. The final deciding factor was these, which turned out much better than I expected, if a little small. I find those odd little fingers strangely expressive. They look even better pinned to a wall.

 

So now I am researching, collecting photos, drawing (!), knitting and modelling hands and gloves.

I"m exploring different sizes and styles, before deciding what I am actually going to do with them!

On an encouraging note, I got told off by a member of staff because I didn't put anything in for an exhibition which is coming up. I really didn't have anything suitable - they had to have D-rings attached, which is difficult with knitting - but in the depths of my flu induced misery, it was good to know someone thought my work was better than I did!