Tuesday 14 April 2009

Bombs Away!

I've been pinned

For subversive knitting above and beyond the call of duty, I received these fun buttons from Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain, the authors of Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti, which will be out this fall, published by Arsenal Pulp Press.

While I got these for my first installation using a knitted cone cosy (as detailed here), I've been working hard since to expand the clothing for my growing cast of cone characters in hopes of exploring more situations for them.

If that sounds overly artsy, well, it's supposed to, although not in an excessively pretentious way: there's something to this work that I find interesting as an artist.

So I've been digging through my collection of handspun yarns, knitting cosies from the huge variety of bits I've been hoarding over the years. In some cases, I've stumbled on leftover pieces of dyed roving, huddled together like orphans, stuffed at the bottom of bags, untouched since I moved back to Calgary in 1997 -- with them, I've done the right thing and spun them out of their lonely misery.

Seeing the lot of them -- almost forty, in fact -- and having a huge bag of large Douglas fir cones I've collected, as well as some smaller, blue spruce cones that I will also "design a wardrobe" for, has started me thinking about where they might find a temporary home.

One place will be on a farm I hope to visit this weekend, with my little friends in tow, and I'm looking at developing an installation project with another artist friend: more details as they emerge.

Last week wasn't high on my list of "fun," which is why there has been a dearth of postings here lately: a position I applied for, and for which I had high hopes, didn't come through, and another project died, at least for next year, thanks to the world economic stupidity.

Both of these bits of news came within two hours, and even though I'm a "glass half-full" person, joviality was in short supply here. Even sock-knitting, the panacea of frustration and mind-overload, fell by the wayside.

Installation A5
Another shot of my first cone cosy installation.

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