UK Ravelry Day

I'm going to the UK Ravelry Day on June 6th, Coventry. I'll be assissting my friend rockpoolcandy with her extreme crochet and we'll take our viruses with us. I'll also be showing off my freeform garments and talking to visitors about my work.

A bit of knitting here and there

Last year I made some plastic yarn floral arrangements to be displayed at the ICHF shows around the UK. I'm hoping to catch a glimpse of them at Sewing for Pleasure at the NEC, or if not, then definitely at Aintree in April.




For National Knitting week Oct 08, I had my own little display at Brighton & Hove Museum. I crocheted this 2m long vine out of plastic bags and a few more corals or - whatever they are -in black and white.


And I made some toys too, a bit of knitting every now and then. These creatures are displayed at the Great British picknit (ICHF-ukhandknitting):


The alien family was made for the I Knit London Day monster competition. I wonder whatever happened to them?



And here's my pride - knitted Liver bird No2. I made this for a commission and it was really hard to get the shape right. I think I just find knitting too boring these days, freeform crochet is so much more interesting and a lot faster. I must start experimenting with freeform knitting.

UK DIY CRAFT 09

I joined the Manchester Craft Mafia last summer and they have just put up an exhibition on UK DIY Craft at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh, near Manchester.

My fantastic fibre fiend friend, Inga = rockpoolcandy and I teamed up to come up with something along the lines of 'science and crochet'. And we came up with the similar idea of looking at microbiology, viruses and bacteria.

So off we went to work on our pieces: rockpoolcandy in her gorgeous handspun and dyed yarns, me in my nasty, gaudy acrylics worrying how they will fit together. And here we go, they just do:



And here are some of my pieces closer-up:

This was my first ever installation and I enjoyed every minute of it, met some really interesting and lovely people and it's an experience and a laugh working with Inga the Professional.

The exhibition is on until April 25th.

Crocheting with plastic yarn

Inga has put up a video about how to prepare plastic bags for knitting and crochet, as well as cutting up clothes.

I'm currently crocheting a plastic floral display for an exhibition on recycling and re-using.
I've found that the cheaper quality supermarket bags are much easier to work with, they are very much like paper, while the high street branch bags (the shiny ones) tend to stick really badly to the hook and knitting with those is a nightmare. But I've found a solution: sprayed WD40 onto a cloth and ran the plastic strip through it. Works like a miracle, the stitches fly off the needles. But it has disadvantages: it stinks and dries quite quickly, so I had to re-spray every time I left the knitting for a day or two. I still prefer to crochet with plastic bags, at least there's only 1 stitch on the hook at a time.

Uk crochet coral reef opening in London

What a wonderful exhibition! I'm proud to have taken part in a worldwide effort. This is a small reef containing some of my neon corals.

I don't often get to go down to london, so while I was there I had to pay a visit to King Cross station to find Platform 9 and 3/4 for my Harry potter-mad daughters. This is it, my backpack a proof that I've been there. I was hoping to see Mrs Weasley in her gorgeous crochet cardi...


I also spent about 5 hours in the V&A. I'm fascinated by this glass chandelier at the main entrance. somehow reminds me of our coral reef:

Uk crochet coral reef

On June 11th the Hyperbolic Coral Reef exhibition opened in London. The work of contributors from around the world are exhibited in the Hayward, while the UK contributions can be seen in the Royal Festival Hall. It is the most amazing, most creative expression of fibre arts I've ever seen, every single piece is a work of art. What better way to find than fibre arts to express our concern about all the junk we dump in our oceans slowly destroying and killing off coral reefs?

I met up with Inga and Helle, two people whose work I admire a lot. We also discovered Anita Bruce, who makes the most interesting knitted evolutionary jellyfish specimens that you can see here.
You can see a whole lot of photos of both reefs on my Flickr page. If you recognise a piece you contributed, feel free to put a note over it.

Winning masks

I entered a competition organised by the Birkenhead Operatic Society at the Liverpool Academy of Art about "The Scarlet Pimpernel". I made these 3 masks, 2 fabric and 1 freeform crochet. And I won first prize, I'm so happy!