A Net Full of (Knitted) Fishes

In April 2014, the Midlands Textile Forum is holding an exhibition at Nature in Art, near Gloucester. The director is very keen to have some of the work exhibited outside in their gardens. I might say they already have a huge permanent exhibition in the garden, dogs made from old tractor parts, mythic insects (large) made from recycled metal. Having promised that his wishes  would be met, I started wondering what I could do. I have woven a flag from acrylic yarn. This was 5 by 4 feet and has survived a number of years without showing any change. I fancy weaving a spider's web in amongst the trees but that would have to be at the last minute. I intend to go round to the Resource Exchange next Thursday and see if they have any suitable material - binder twine anyone?

When I was in Dundee at New Year, my sister, Dorothy, was having a clear-out and came across some netting of black cord with a two inch mesh and the thought  'fishes in a net' popped into my head. And then instead of weaving, how about knitting fishes? So I asked at Guild  if anyone knew where I could find a pattern for fishes and Chris Wright said she could create one. And here are two fishes knitted by me from her pattern. Thank you Chris. The yarn is 100% acrylic and I propose to peg these up in the garden and see how they survive. I have knitted another one but, following Alice Schlein's method of making fabric into book covers, it is currently plastered with PVA on one side. When dry I will do the other side and put that outside as well. The big advantage of knitting is that I can knit and watch TV at the same time!!

This is all triggered off by Linda Scurr, Rosie Price and myself viewing a textile outside in the Welsh National Arboretum. Admittedly it was in October and the exhibits had been there for some months. They had not worn well. 

I will probably weave something from acrylic yarn too but I am mulling over what to make out of the fabric. I wonder about another flag.

I have warped up the Voyager with my ikat warp and woven  a foot or so. I have got too much irregularity in my warps. The warp was wound on a straight run to minimise any changes in warp length and I carefully tied the warp when dyed into one inch bouts. This was done very tightly before putting the warp on the back beam.  I thought it was squared up nicely where I started but it is not squared up at the front of the warp. It remains to be seen whether it gets better as I weave more.

Bookbinding class again this week. I spent the time putting endpapers into three books. I have gone back to the Jules Verne books and dealt with the end papers. I printed out the whirlpool on the laserjet at maximum size and then took it to our local printer who blew it up by 30% and printed it on A3 paper 100 gsm. Very satisfactory