Saturday, March 03, 2012

Design Inspirations

Recently, I met up with a group of my old college friends.  A few hours spent catching up, eating, drinking...and admiring the lovely merino scarf worn by one of them.  Very subtle discreet patterns in a lovely yarn...  so that when I was looking for a small, portable project to knit on the train as we went into London last week this idea popped into my head.



This is a 4-ply yarn, so it is giving me very good stitch definition on these little patterns from Barbara Walker's "Treasury".  In fact these are such simple patterns that I have taken to inventing my own later in the strip.    I've not finished one 100 gm ball yet, so the yardage is excellent.  Very satisfying as a piece of knitting too.



We went to London to see the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum, which is just finishing.  Certainly an interesting idea to curate artefacts from the collections alongside his own work, although the items chosen tend to be folk art.  More problematic, for me, was the assertion from the outset of the role played by his childhood teddy, Alan Measles.  I think I prefer my art more inscrutable than that.  I'd at least have liked to be able to work out that the bear was a recurring theme for myself.



And here we have my husband's latest production: a shoe-rack for our hall.  Nothing inscrutable about this; it does what it says on the tin.  Yet it has a pleasing honesty and integrity about it, in the grain and texture of its material.

4 comments:

kristieinbc said...

I love the British Museum! When I was there last fall I was sorry I didn't have a whole week just to spend exploring it.

You are lucky that your shoe rack actually gets used. In our house shoe racks seem to be more of a "suggestion" as to approximately where the shoes should go. My family considers anything within a foot of the rack close enough. :-)

Anonymous said...

I love your scarf - I have had a break from knitting - I must make the effort to start again.
The shoe rack is lovely - much better than the plastic/metal ones!

Mary Lou said...

I love the bowl on the shoe rack!

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

That's a very superior shoe rack . What a beautiful finish it has !
But I do rather like the idea of an inscrutable one ... it would just give a Jeeves look at one's cheap stripey wellies ...