I'm starting to knit for the I heart Kings Cross art project : http://iheartkx.wordpress.com - the knitted pieces are going to be tied to poles and trees as part of an art project in Kings Cross (Sydney) in october. I'm not really following a pattern of stitches - they said make it ~30cm wide and anything up to 3metres, the longer the better. so I'm just changing stitches and needles and colours as my mood decides. seeing how a mix of smaller (12mm) and larger (25mm) stitches go together. using 3 strands of yarn (8ply acrylic) to thicken it up. so far I like the textures. reminds me of Australian chocolates - cherry ripe, mint slice or maybe peppermint crisp. (I think I have chocolate on the brain tonight ;)

24/08/2009

i <3 kings X project - art knitting : day1 on 12seconds.tv

video page

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25/08/2009

I bought some 15mm bamboo needles at lunch today. and saw some thicker yarn at lincraft. bright colours and the threads are different widths - like the silk yarn. but this is 50% wool & 50% acrylic. it's nice to knit up. maybe I should have bought a few balls of each colour though as the stripes will be narrowish.

kings cross yarn on 12seconds.tv

video page

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29/08/2009 saturday

was a great group of knitters in the park in Kings Cross today. all knitting for the I heart Kings Cross project. learnt some new stitches and spoke to lots of cool people. we'll be there every sat in september. was great that some people just walked by and sat down and joined in - including a woman on holidays from Taiwan who has a knitting group there. she was a fast knitter too! it was pretty windy towards the end - I think I'm wearing half of Kings Cross now as the wind stirred up the dirt iheartkx.wordpress.com

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01/09/2009

finished (!) rainbow tree cosy for I heart Kings Cross project on 12seconds.tv

video file

it's finished! I was going to make it longer but I feel like doing something else and ~ 1.2 metres should be long enough

knitted tree cosy for the I heart Kings Cross project
I'm glad I finished it. still have time to do some of the finer ones like those at http://dneese.blogspot.com

The Sydney Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef - In the interest of contributing to the world wide phenomenon initiated by The Institute For Figuring, In Stitches Collective is facilitating the creation of a Sydney Coral Reef. We invite you to participate in this woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and craft, a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.

The reef was inspired by geometric models of hyperbolic space, originally developed by mathematician Dr Daina Taimina in 1997, using the art of crochet. Until that time most mathematicians had believed it was impossible to construct physical models of hyperbolic forms, yet nature had been doing just that for hundreds of millions of years. It turns out that many marine organisms embody hyperbolic geometry, among them kelps, corals, sponges and nudibranchs. The IFF reef not only looks like an actual coral reef, it draws on the same underlying geometry endemic in the oceanic realm.

The Crochet Coral Reef is a collective and collaborative experience created by The Institute For Figuring (IFF) directors Margaret and Christine Wertheim (www.theiff.org). The project not only draws attention to the beauty and fragility of the coral reef (an ecosystem system most vulnerable to the effects of climate change), but also links communities through science, mathematics, art & craft.

In Stitches Collective are holding a workshop at 2pm on the 21st of Feb at 44 Little Oxford Street, Darlinghurst (behind Taylor Square on the Surry Hills side). visit http://sydneyreef.blogspot.com for more details

The IFF site has instructions for you to build your own hyperbolic plane

One suggestion is to use plastic bags instead of yarn as another method of recycling them. the gooseflesh blog has a plastic bag yarn tutorial on how to reuse plastic bags as yarn.

The Tract House is a "spread-the-word" project that debuted at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore on May 31, 2008. The Tract House tracts were written by friends, neighbors, acquaintances, visitors to this website, and friends of friends. While most popular tracts are religious, The Tract House tracts can be nearly anything— manifestos, diatribes, stories, rants, poems, or lyrics. They can be about whatever the writer finds pressing, whether it be something personal, professional, political, domestic, local, or global. Gallery visitors are encouraged to peruse the many tracts and take home what they wish. Visitors of this website are encouraged to print the tracts on their home printers. It is hoped that the tracts will educate, activate, infuriate, obfuscate, titillate, inspire, upset, and irritate.

Hi there, I'd like to invite you to our exciting new social network at
Craft Spider (http://craft.craftspider.com)!!

We plan on building this network up rapidly to be a fantastic and fun
place to meet other crafters and to communicate with new and existing
customers!

Not only can you now build a detailed profile for your organisation, but
also join and start user groups on any topic you wish! We also have
forums, and the ability to upload and share as many photos as you want
about your work, or perhaps just items that inspire you!

We also have free classifieds so you can buy and sell treasures! You
also get a blog.. plus we have a global calendar where you can promote
events to everyone such as classes, your next sale or trade fair!

You can choose to make your groups public or private (by invitation
only), so its a great fun way to communicate with customers too. Also as
people sign up you can make new friends and invite them to your groups.

Etsy.com is a community driven online store that people making handmade goods can sell their products - their motto is "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade". there's a zine called Storque, and you can read about some of the success stories highlighting successful Etsy storeholders. some storeholders have been able to give up their day jobs to sell their works fulltime via Etsy, whilst others are part-time sellers.

Customers can browse by colours and find something to buy that matches that colour. or they can search one of the 105000 stores for one in their local area should they wish to buy local. there are a couple of Time Machines where customers can browse recently and past listed random items, ordered by posting time. Etsy also supports the buy handmade challenge for the holiday season.

"Guerrilla knitting" has a couple of meanings in the knitting community - to some, it merely means knitting in public, while to others, it means creating public art by knitted means.

Rose White from yarnivore spoke at The History of Guerilla Knitting session at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress in 2007 in Berlin on day 3 - 29/12/2007. a torrent video can be downloaded of the session. (open the video in VLC if you don't have another video player that can play the .mkv video file). The Chaos Communication Congress is organised by the Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest hacker group, founded in 1981.

knitting patterns have a certain mathematical quality to them. knitting is basically a binary system - knit & purl stitches. so it's possible to knit binary sequences, letters eg convert the letters to ascii hex, then binary - some people knit their names as signatures in their work.

people knit in fibonacci sequences and end up with patterns and colours / stripes that somehow seem natural, just as the fibonacci sequences showing up so much in nature.

so I'm keeping a list of patterns and urls for sites on logical / mathematical knitting.

there's also the crocheting - such as the hyperbolic plane crocheted recently by Daina Taimina as a way to describe it physically. I need to practice crocheting though, so will stick to knitting for a while

Craftster is a forum for people who love to make things but who are not inspired by cross-stitched home sweet home plaques and wooden boxes with ducks in bonnets painted on... If you've been known to run with scissors, you can break the rules of crafting with your fellow rebel DIY'ers there!