So I commanded myself recently that I was not allowed to buy any new yarn until I’d used up at least half of the stash I already have. Seeing as I have roughly 50 different types of yarn in my stash, that’s a bit of a feat. That’s 50 different types, mind you, not skeins—quite a few of those I have multiple skeins of. However, with these mismatched myriad skeins and a need to use them, I now have the opportunity to make something I’ve been wanting to for a while.

Crocheted coral reefs.

I first saw my first of these a few years back—not really sure how many at this point, but it was while browsing online for patterns. I eventually was led to the Institute for Figuring, who run the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, a fascinating project combining crafting, mathematics, feminism, and… well, read it in their own words, as they phrase it far more intelligently than I can at the end of a long day.

Being a literature person, I could say that mathematics aren’t my strong point, and thus it’s odd that I’m attracted to this project. But that would be a lie—I enjoyed maths in school (to a certain point), and when I really started to get into knitting I wanted to revise my geometry (which I have yet to have time for). I just didn’t like it as much as reading. I have the feeling that, had I discovered knitting and crochet far earlier, I would have been far more interested in maths. (Small note: My mother loves maths, but to my surprise has only been casually interested in knitting and crochet so far, though she did once make me a fabulous scarf).

Anyway, the IFF had links to other reefs, both “satellites” of their projects and independent, which I browsed and browsed and browsed. Here and there, when I had a spare bit of yarn, I crocheted a small coral form; on one occasion of brief madness, I made an anemone out of plastic bags.

Cue moving! The instigation for the dalek has been the instigation for another item. One of our windows has a small but significant draft (as it doesn’t close properly), and I’m not one for stuffing tissues into cracks. Thus, I am knitting a draught dodger. Then, once it is finished and stuffed, it will become the base for…

…the Draught Reef.

If it goes well, I plan to make a jewel-toned reef that will conglomerate onto a ring… and be hung on my wall. Most of my walls have some sort of decoration on it (rather a lot, in some cases), but the one above my bed is surprisingly bare. As the rest of the room has batik prints, hanging jellyfish, postcards of sea otters and Hawaiian cards, a reef-garden wall sculpture would be fitting. Also, this will officially be part of the Hibernation Offensive, as it’s stash-busting AND gathering together knitted forms that have been useless until now.

So. Fibre art and wall sculptures. I think I’ve officially gone mad.

In short, once the Draft Reef is finished I’ll make the wall sculpture… After I knit a tea-cozy, because there’s nothing that makes crocheting slower than cold tea.

Coming soon: More bellydance articles, and a round-up of Festival!

Tags: art,crochet,knit,reef,the hibernation offensive
Categories: Arts, projects
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Long time no post! The middle of my June has, indeed, been crazy (a friend’s FABULOUS wedding, and running around North America with another friend!), but the last few weeks have been quiet. I’ve done some research, but mostly I’ve been rediscovering time for myself. One thing that I’ve lost in the past few years, in my desperation to keep up with both my arts and academics, is that I don’t really give myself much ME time. Yes, I spend (far too much) time on the internet, reading webcomics etc., but that’s not ME time. However, for two weeks in the middle of this month my computer was getting repaired (oops), and so I had to find other ways to entertain myself than the endless streaming of digitized information. So, gleefully, I’ve been reading children and young adult fantasy novels, a guilty pleasure that I feel absolutely NO guilt about. I discovered Rick Riordan, first via his new book “The Red Pyramid” and then via his “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series (OMG I just finished book 4 and haven’t bought the last book yet NEED NOW), which despite what I’ve heard about its related rubbishy movie has been really quite entertaining. I also went to see Knight and Day with a friend, and to my surprise it was quite awesome. Not fourteen flavours of awesome, but at least five. And I’ve gone SWIMMING. If it weren’t for my dislike of public pools, I’d go swimming all the time. I find it calming and restorative, and I do some of my best thinking underwater.

Representative of this whole rediscovery, however, is a craft project I began years ago. The yarn, pattern, crochet hook and beads were a store-created kit given to me by my parents, but as I rarely worked on gifts for myself, it was often put off until I went on holidays (or at least plane flights), because crochet hooks are OK on planes (knitting needles aren’t). But on this trip home, I’ve finally finished it.

It’s lovely, soft, and light. And its structure reminds me that I shouldn’t over-structure my life — leave time for the ME-time, and the arts and academia will follow.

Tags: art vs. academia,crochet,life
Categories: Academia, Arts, crochet
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I am really bad at finishing things. This is particularly true if I don’t have a deadline. If I have a deadline—say, costuming needs finishing for a performance, or paper needs written for a conference—then I’m usually quite good at getting it (mostly) done. But things that don’t have a deadline languish. Some things I simply forget to do—like drawing. Others get procrastinated on—blogging is one of these.

That’s why I have a spreadsheet that I call “life schedule”. This is a bit hyperbolic, but roughly true. It sprang from my original outlines for my PhD, which it still contains—including a month-by-month breakdown and a week-by-week. But then this past January I expanded it. Knitting, writing, dance, etc.: if it was a creative or academic project, it was put on there (and that sums up pretty much my whole life). Each received a monthly goal, such as writing one-shots, blogging once a week, or filling two sketchbook pages. However, I made the mistake of thinking of NEW projects for knitting / crochet.

You see, by my bed I have a bag that I knitted and felted. Originally, it was to be my project bag, and filled with anything I was working on. Over the last year or so, however, it’s turned into the languishing bag. Unfinished projects were shoved into there to be promptly forgotten, and on a recent review of the contents (when I was procrastinating on something else), I found eight unfinished projects. This might not seem like much, but I don’t know how long some of these have been ignored. Some may pre-date my move across the pond.

So, instead of picking up the needles then and there and haphazardly trying to work my way through the chaos, I turned to my computer. Everything under “knitting” for my life schedule was promptly deleted, and each month was assigned an unfinished project until August. Hopefully by then I’ll have everything finished, and can turn to working through my lovely skeins in a desperate de-stashing attempt.

On the needles first, hopefully finished by Easter?

A stuffed “chocolate” bunny.

Yum!

Tags: crochet,knit,projects,the hibernation offensive
Categories: Arts, crochet, knit, projects
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Colour scheme is good. Now I just need to destroy/rewrite the links (what a horrible section right now) and figure out whether there’s any other plug-ins I want to add. I’d like to find progress bars for monitoring projects, but I haven’t found anything pretty. Most of them are simply horrible to look at.

The header is a rough draft… there will be swirlies added later, and a better background, and possibly resizing of the text. I’d also like to add some knit/crochet/maille projects to it, but that would require me to do something pretty in knit (my first cable?), crochet (my first lace?), or maille (that’s simple — just a big block of 4-in-1, ugh).

Speaking of actual projects! I’ve done some today–worked on my bellydancing socks (I’m only a couple dozen rows away from finishing the first one!) and a maille belt that I’d had on the backburner for eons! No crochet, but that’s because all there is in the crochet stack is a bag that I’ve gotten utterly sick of, as happens when one just *sc over and over for hundreds of stitches.

And I should probably sleep sometime tonight… enough playing with php for me!

Tags: crochet,knit,maille
Categories: projects
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