If the apocalypse has this much fairisle and cabling, I'll be pretty happy

Morning All- has anyone been watching "The Fades". It's a rather well crafted offering from BBC3 (yeah, BBC3! They made something good - sometimes it happens). Anyway, if the interesting idea of our post death journey getting mixed up and ruining the world isn't enough to tempt you, perhaps the knitwear is? There's a visual feast every episode.

Plus its got him off of Psychoville on it, playing a scifi mad geek sidekick. I do find the "geek turned hero" theme irksome, because often it presents "geeks" as a people with humorous idiosyncracies, but an unrealistic off-the-scale eloquence and sharp wit (Seth Cohen from the OC I'm ruddy looking at you). Or they just wear glasses. There's so much goodwill between the two characters that you can let that go.

Besides, they have awesome knitwear. and no glasses

The appliance of science, yadda yadda

I spent the weekend at the Science Museum, helping out the stitch london lot. I taught plenty of children and a fair few adults how to make a pom pom (If you want to know, google it, or go here)

and thusly, this A&G (Adam and Garth) clip was never far from my brain

There were some amazing things to see and do, and I couldn't possibly do them all justice, so head over to Lauren's stitch london tumblr to see them all in their glory.

One thing I really enjoyed was (re)learning to cross stitch -in my roughshod freestyle way - with Mr X Stitch, who lives at http://www.mrxstitch.com/ and his minions (they'll love that, they will). If you haven't cross stitched for years, give it a go! This years Christmas is going to be full of contemporary subversive samplers. More so than last year. Here is my offering

To Infinknitty and Beyond

And that's the last time I use that pun ever.

This weekend, see my giant plug and socket alongside plenty of science based stitched specimens and the Science Museum, nr South Kensington tube station,in central london. Also there will be a HUGE knitted solar system, and guess what? I only went and knit Uranus, and we all know uranus is a hilarious homophone. Also one of Claire Platt's super cool aeroplanes will be there. 

This heart by Sayraphim Lothian got lost in the post winging its way from Australia. Seemed a shame so I thought I'd give it an extra mention

Click here for all the info

It's Not Fair

I had a reply on facebook "It isn't just the labour it is the fact that we are wasting fabric i.e. we grow cotton that needs water etc then throw it away". As well as "Who has the time to go shopping every week?"

And this was my reply: 

"Yes, that was a good point made in the article (difficult to address them all concisely). I think the issue of price is bound with the throw away / bulk buy attitude. If an item is too cheap, then it can be bought without commitment.

and I have no idea who goes shopping once a week (even once a month is a push). However, one can easily buy eight garments in primark once a month and meet this average".

So I have some further thoughts:

The appetite for new clothing will not cease overnight, and nor should it cease altogether. I think even my brother - who clings to clothing until they have disintegrated - accepts that occasionally you need to replace your old garments. So we need to be able to buy clothes without feeling (or being) aligned with the axis of evil. So we need to know where to buy this stuff.

I've heard people suggest etsy.com, folksy.com and other such handmade market places before. On the whole- great AND thanks to http://www.tineye.com/ you can weed out resellers more easily. Personal favourites are braintreehemp.co.uk, toms.co.uk (for shoes) and peopletree.co.uk (although sometimes I struggle with their impossibly small armholes). I've bought awesome shoes from ascensiononline.com too. Has anyone found a decent place to buy swimwear from?

(I recognise that the article also covered a "war on want" of sorts. At university I struggled (and still sometimes struggle) with the idea of generating more "things" in the world. My tutor said "You are making things that people treasure". Which I don't think it a bad thing. As long as that is what does happen)

Ode to Penguins

Here is a poem I wrote very quickly in a text

Oh Penguin

You once stood staple in my lunch box

now a diminutive mockery of treat-time

I laugh in your face and not at your jokes.

No, stay! no more poems I promise. I've been trying to improve the website (and include cardigans as there have been enquiries). Well, here are my new photo albums - there's a bit more there to look at than before so have a peruse. Also please note I accidentally deleted my images folder on my server, so I've been trying to replace that but some of it is lost. I'm repairing links as soon as I can, but if you find a glitch, sorry :-(.

Utterly charming unique jumpers from Where's me Jumper?

I read this article in the guardian today. Sweatshops and such like are no secret, so I'm not going to bang on about that incredibly worthy but well worn topic - although I'm still yet to find a really good list of fair trade companies or independent designers who make their stuff in britain*. Nor am I so happy with her liberal use of percentages and loose language when it came to statistics.

However, I find her breakdown of the (d)evolution of the shopper very interesting - especially the genius of the Zara tapping into fly-by-night objects of desire, keeping up the compulsion to return and not lose out on the next unmissable purchase. I also found her analysis of a national homogenised wardrobe familiar, perhaps it started when Trinny and Susannah told us (ok, mainly women) how to "dress for our shape", and duly, we invested in v necks, ankle boots and whatever else it said in that book.

I did notice a while ago the "clone dresses" - it was clear what had been on the catwalk because there were variants of it everywhere. It was so fast, you probably saw it on the high street before it was in Vogue. There are points to be made about the consumer lacking in originality, but do they care?


Night night


*happy to start making one

Spring has most definitely Sprung!

Yesterday I ventured to Brixton whereupon I discovered the Crafty Fox Market. BTW I'm not currently doing any markets, I'm working on building up my range, sorting out my website and selling outlets. Christmas burnt me out and it's no longer wool season, but I'm still making and selling, just not at the constant pre-Christmas rate.

I'm starting to love going to these events and seeing faces I've met from previous craft fairs (and the Knitting and Stitching show). Zeena Shah of HeartZeena is doing tonnes of workshops people can get involved with. James Ward of Jimbobart (click the plate) has started selling prints (wicked wicked), so I'm now the proud owner of this crafty fox. Beautiful! Forgotten Stitches, who also won a place at the Knitting and Stitching show last year, has extended her range with bigger deers and more brooches.

Other things:

I've been looking at past notebooks and sketchbooks, partly to throw stuff out, and to see if there were any ideas I'd missed. I found what is best described as an externalised inner dialogue from before I came up with the biscuits. You can click on it if you want to read it.

The Miro exhibition at the Tate is dense and rather wonderful. In particular I was fond of the "moustache picture" (can't remember the real name :-/ ) in the second room with the gridlines showing. I found his roughshod-vs-meticulously neat approach both bloody minded and brilliant.

If you haven't, check out www.petehindle.com , he's a creative type with some interesting insights. And a completely different blog www.katielovesthis.com/ lists weird and wonderful designs from the good people of internet.

I also made a quite lovely cardigan, photos when I find the charger.