Busy, busy. busy.

Look what I've been working on!


Tiny Brian still needs his little hammer and buttons for his shirt. Mini Em now has a little black apron and a petite pie box. I'm going to make her some shades once I acquire some black jewellery wire.

The case they are sitting on contains even more components of this project I'm working on. Much more to come!

Also, this was shot at Nat's family's cottage. We had a bit of a Guelph time reunion last week. What a great weekend! We ate like queens, swam about 5 times a day, and roasted (Well, Louise charred) s'mores every night. Lovely summer mini vacation.

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.

The Prince's Rainforest Project.

The boys are throwing some big money at rainforest conservation projects. I think this is a really interesting approach to public involvement. I've seen the commercials for this about 100 times. They play them constantly on Virgin Blue and I've taken two flights with them in the past week (the only reason Vigin Blue's food is better than NZ Air's is because they don't bother to serve any).

You can sign up to support their cause here (Daniel Craig likes them too):

This is very interesting to me after actually spending some time in these areas. I think they're doing a really good thing and I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye on this website.

Also, today security at Virgin Blue took away my Canadian camping fork. Not only did she take it away, she laughed at me when I said I thought I was allowed to take it on the plane. And it wasn't a nice laugh at all. Aussies are very good at doing not-so-nice laughing. I wouldn't really mind, except the only reason I had the fork with me is because the previous Virgin Blue security person had laughed at me because I thought I wasn't allowed to take the fork on the plane. So, now I only have a spoon to eat with (well, until I hit the cheap markets tomorrow and find a replacement) and my fork is in the mail on the way to Warsaw in an unmarked envelope. Mom, when you pick up my fork from the post office, this is why I sent it. When security takes things away they ask you what you want them to do with it. So far two pairs of my sewing scissors have gone in the garbage (it's easy to forget them in the bottom of my carry on pack because I usually carry my knitting in there). This particular security guard, after laughing at me, wouldn't let me throw my fork in the garbage because it was so nice and insisted that I mail it home. I had some stamps to use up and I had an envelope, so away it went.

First off.

There's this thing that has been bothering me for a little while now. I catch myself thinking about it at odd times and noticing it around me wherever I go. It distracts me from my work and my everyday life. I know I need to deal with it, but I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that.

If there's anything I've learned in my past 7 years of postsecondary education it's that when something is bothering you this much you need to do something about it. This bother is what makes the scientific community tick. We notice something and it gets to us, we feel angry about a situation, confused or frustrated because we don't know, so we learn all we can and we ask questions. We ask clear, consise, well-thoughtout questions. Then we take these questions and develop hypotheses and predictions to study. And so it goes.

This thing that I'm thinking about is too big right now for me to put it down in one post. I think I'm going to need a few good, long ramblings just to sort this all out. I know it has to do with communication, disconnect between the scientific community and the general public, the division of arts and science, being pigeon-holed as a scientist when there is really so much more that I do. I suppose I'm struggling to define my own identity right now. I'm at this funny-feeling changing-over graduating and looking for the next big project while I try to satisfy my craving for adventure place. I've spent the past year trying to live in the moment and manage my anxiety, but it's tough to enjoy my current situation while I deal with all of these new ones.

So, lately I've been looking for some way to focus all of this chaotic energy. I've been trying to find myself a personal challenge or project. A lot of people on the internet seem to enjoy documenting some aspect of their daily life with pictures and blog entries. I think I want to do this too. I've made three previous attempts to join the blogosphere. All regarding topics I thoroughly enjoy, but I haven't been able to commit. I'm not making any promises about the content here, but I am going to attempt to stick with it for awhile. Maybe I should think about giving myself a more well-defined goal in that respect. I'll think about it for awhile.

Just had to get that out there,
Cass