Little mini me (a self-portrait in wool and the science of who we are).

Awhile ago I came across a collaborative knitting project organized by Stitch London and the London Science Museum in London, United Kingdom. The project is part of a re-opening of the Museum's permanent gallery entitled Who Am I? The gallery encourages visitors to investigate what it means to be an individual by exploring various art installations and interactive displays. The organizers of this project requested hand-made stitched selves from people around the world. They asked that the little look-alikes be 15 cm tall and be made from crochet, knitting, or sewing techniques.

I made my little me over a period of two days. When I first heard about the project, the deadline was already approaching, so I had to have her put-together and shipped off to England quite quickly.

I crocheted the body and then made knit each of the little accessories from left-over bits of wool from projects I had completed over the past year.


Her main garment is my Town Sweater, made from special Manitoulin Island wool that Nat and I found at a farm during one of our roadtrips north. Her socks are made from Dyeabolical wool that was sent to me in Yukon in an Alice in Wonderland themed package! Her mis-matched left legwarmer is made from Wellington Fibres wool and angora blend (one of my favourite wools in the entire world...a staple wool while I was in school at the University of Guelph). On her right leg is a striped warmer made from handspun wool all the way from Nelson, New Zealand. Her mittens are bubblegum pink alpaca merino blend, also from Fibre Spectrum in Nelson, NZ. The feather and fan neckwarmer is made from a luxury alpaca wool from Romni Wools in Toronto (one of the most impressive wools stores I have ever been to in the entire world). She also carries a little mitred square bag in SWS (soy wool stripes) which contains a tiny blue silk-blend Calorimetry, a replica of my favourite brown beret, and a teensy tiny WAANAA fan toque that I made Matt for his birthday.


The toque she is wearing is one my favourite knit items, made from Manos Del Uruguay silk blend in a slip-stitch pattern I made up on the fly.

Here are a couple of the life-size items, for you to compare:




Once I had her finished, I was actually impressed by the resemblance. I've worn this outfit on more than one occasion.

Mom took her to the post office with mailing instructions. When she came back, she told me that she had a hard time sending her away and thought about keeping her. I'm glad she managed to put her in the mail (even though I thought about keeping her for a little bit too).

The people at Stitch London are going to be writing about the project and posting pictures of all of the littles on their blog. I will keep an eye on it and post here when I find my little one.

Also, I am working on my own new project. I mentioned this awhile back, but things have been moving slowly here on the blog front. I have decided to take on the 101 Things in 1001 Days Challenge. The challenge is fairly simple. An individual writes down 101 things they would like to do and completes the things over a 1001 day time-frame. The things must be clearly defined. I actually created a list on a bus ride between Hokitika and Fox, NZ. The landscape was inspiring and I had thought about taking on the challenge for awhile. I officially started my challenge on Monday, April 26, 2010. My 1001th day will be my 30th birthday. The 101th thing is to throw a big party. Two birds, one stone.

Of course, when I started this project I was in the Yukon with little to no internet access. I was maintaining a paper journal instead. I have to backtrack and add the things I was working on earlier, but I thought I might as well start with this (I haven't been feeling over motivated to work on projects these days, but that's why I want to do this challenge and I have always decided it's better to keep this place running than to worry about the order of my posts). I'll be documenting my progress here and labeling each of the relevant posts with a 101/1001 tag. I'm also going to post the official list in a new page of my blog so that I can keep track of my overall progress.

That's all for now. I am officially declaring this Thing 1. Knit a self-portrait. And now I'm heading to bed.