Astounding Knits!

I need and want this book about knitting. It's the kind of knitting I want to look at and read about. And then be inspired to make something cool. On Amazon you can look inside!

Stitch Yourself exhibit.

The London Science Museum's Who Am I exhibit opened on June 30th, 2010. Two hundred and fifty nine little stitched selves crowded into the entrance way display case. I can't display the pictures here, but here are links to the overall exhibit and the Science Museum Logo in the foreground of the exhibit.

There are several close-ups of the exhibit, but I haven't been able to spot my little doll. Stitch London says that they catalogued each entry and will be featuring all of the dolls in blog posts over the next few months. I'll keep an eye out for mine. Hopefully she made it to the UK and isn't lost at sea.

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.

Spins & Needles Winterlude 2010 press release.

Cool, eh? I saw some pictures of the contributed cozies on their blog, but I couldn't see mine. Hopefully it made its way to Ottawa safetly and is keeping a tree warm. I'll try to find it when I visit next week.

Random stripe generator.

I've been listening to way back issues of Brenda Dayne's Cast On Podcast. In one of the very early ones she mentions this really cool bit of software from a blog called Biscuits and Jam to help create stripe patterns for knitting. I'm currently planning a striped raglan and I always pictured it with a regular stripe pattern, but maybe I should consider a random design.

Happy Australia Day!

Today I mailed my contribution to Spins & Needles Urban Cozy Project at Winterlude 2010.

Spins and Needles is a knitting group in Ottawa. This year they have designed a large-scale outdoor art installation made up of knit pieces from all across Canada. They have invited many organizations to participate. Bronwen sent me the call for submissions the other day and I decided I'd send something in.

My something is a large garter stitch patch made of three smaller garter stitch patches. I used a lot of balls of wool that I will never use for anything else. Mainly what I could dig out of my packed-away wool collection.

This is it. It will look better when it is cozy-ing a tree in Confederation Park or Majors Hill Park or Parc Jacques-Cartier.





This is an in-progress picture of CP carrying out the kneading stage. This is a very important part of the knitting process ensuring a properly risen final product with a nice even crumb.

Raes Junction.

Right now I am way out in the country in the southern part of the South Island.

The internet here is dial-up and I have a cold so I can't tolerate the lack of speed to put up posts here.

I have learned how to spin on a wheel and have already made a toque out of the wool I spun. They have huge industrial wool carders here and make all sorts of rovings for spinners. The past few days have been black merino and silk. It is so beautiful and I wish I could have a huge bag of it, but it would take a year to spin it all on a drop spindle at home. The grandfather has been running this place for years and he does all the dying too. This week he dyed a bunch of hanks of spun merino pink, purple, and blue. Not really my colour combination, but I did find some I liked. He sold me 3 HUGE hanks of light heather grey, dark heather drey, and light heather purple for $10 each. There is enough to make a giant sweater. I'm going to make a normal sized striped raglan sweater and still have a ton left over. I haven't figured out how I'm going to get it all home yet. I'll probably leave some other things behind.