HANDMADE NATION TIMES.

I will be introducing the UK premiere of Handmade Nation at the V&A this Saturday... 2pm - 3.30 pm, Lecture Theatre Saturday, 25 July Handmade Nation documents a movement of artists, crafters, and designers that marry historical techniques with a punk and DIY (Do It Yourself) ethos. Contact the V&A Bookings Office for free tickets: bookings.office@vam.ac.uk or + 44 (0) 20 7942 2211

DANCING IN SPACE.

40 years ago this week, man took a first walk on the moon and last night we all went there too thanks to Rocky and Professor Nervous Stephen who played us an inter galactic selection of space songs. We floated to Rah Band, 'Clouds Across the Moon', Queen 'Flash Gordon' and Hawkwind 'Silver Machine' with The Clangers on the big screen, while Rocky lit up our lives with his cardboard box space helmet powered with christmas tree lights and waving his arms clad in those tumble dryer tubes that you stick out of the window, while Professor Nervous Stephen lined up tune after tune under a thick sweat from his tin foil strobe lit capsule. Thanks guys it's great to know that our bodies and the vinyl are all formed by the same molecules together in one universe.

'MRS. MINIVER'S PETULANT SOCK.'

Congratulations Ingrid Murnane on successfully finishing a difficult UFO and giving us much to think about in the process.  This is what Ingrid wrote about her piece....

"I was thinking about relationships and how two people can become very interdependent on one another. Also about what we bring to a relationship.  There is a geometry problem called Mrs. Miniver's Problem that is about over lapping circles. It has a basis in a story....

 is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-shaped piece in the middle.  On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life, none. 

The sock pattern lent itself to this idea rather well, as instead of finishing the toe, I knit another heal and up the leg, so it would be a metaphor for a relationship between two people. I interpreted the idea of the circles into knitting by making the circles 3-D, turning them on their sides and making staggered transitions rather than a venn diagram idea.  I wanted to make the transition between one sock and the other pretty obvious so I used the contrasting yarn, and also (in somewhat of a stereotype I admit) made a female sock.  Actually while I was making it, it was more about the relationship between the origional sock maker and me, si I made the second sock to be the one that I would wear (that is to say an emerald green sock with a frilly cuff).

It is perhaps a warning not to get too hung up on one another or you might not have enough of yourself left to keep adding anything to that relationship. I rather like that nobody can wear it. That it's something that is generally thought of as a practical garment, but I've been able to make into a piece of impractical art. I think it might be part of a series."

Wow...Ingrid....thank you so very much for these lovely thoughts.