I can knit

My aunt taught me on friday how to knit and now i can't stop. Ive been thinking of ways to incorperate knitting into my animations, at the moment I can see it working by producing a square of knitting and unravelling it to produce the animation.

I have also been thinking about producing an animaition to be part of the visuals to be played behind a dj. For this I have been thinking about different techniques and maybe using collage aswell as stitch.

Craft & Design Centre

I visited the Craft & Design Centre for the first time yesterday, even though its about 2 minutes away from my flat. I loved it. At the moment there is a piece on by the Uk craft Mafias who are a group of people who use traditional crafts suchas crochet and knitting in a mordern way. The work that has been produced is amazing, I found it so inspiring and could see myself doing similar work. To coinside with the UK crafts Mafias exhibition, Artyarn are group similar to that of knitta are inviting people to produce a piece 7 cm wide by 40 cm long of either knitted or crochet material which will then be used to cover the first floor banister of the Manchester Craft and Design centre. I have been trying to teach myself to knit for months now but haven't been able to get it right but on my last visit back to my parents house I found out that one of my friends is a skilled knitter and are willing to teach me over easter. Which is great because the deadline for producing a piece is 25th April which i will be back for, so i hope to enter a piece.

2nd Unpicking Animation

Tried out another unpicking animation, it works pretty well. Just have to wait and see what it will be like played backwards.

Have booked the animation suite for after the Easter hols so that I can get a few more done before the assessment.

Unpicking Animation

The animation worked out really well, I have yet to see it played backwards but it works well as it is. It has a very unique quality to it, and almost looks like a sketchy drawing. So I am going to look into different drawing techniques. I really like the way the thread moves in different frames. At the moment it looks like the plant is dieing but hopefully when played in reverse it will seems as though it is growing. I am going to look into trying out this technique but use it in different ways and experimenting with it.
I'm thinking of trying it out in layers of colour, and using appliqued pieces which will be unpicked to reveal whats underneath. I am consentrating on plants at the moment because of the element of growing and change involved, i plan on studying the way the grow and using the information to produce a animaition.

Art of Tea

I have been given the chance to produce some work for the Art of Tea in Didsbury. I'm so excited about it as it will be the first time I will have my work put up in a space and I'll maybe even get the chance to sell some pieces which would be great.
At the moment I'm not sure if I have anything to use so I'm going to complete the four pieces I'm working on and then think about what I can produce for the Art of Tea. Whatever I produce I aim to link it with my uni work so that it can be entered with everything else I have done at the end of the year in May.

Essay

Thank god thats over with.

Deadlines

I have found that over the past few weeks I have been constantly chopping and changing what I'm working on, which is good as I am producing lots of different pieces and testing out different techniques and mediums but I have found that I don't actually have many finished pieces. To sort this out I have set myself deadlines for each piece of work that I have on the go at the moment.

• March 15th Hand Embroided Debbie Harry
• March 22nd Dog Animation
• March 29th Unpicking Animation
• April 12th Book of Illustrations

Once these main pieces are complete I will be more confident that I have a decent amount of work produced to show in my end of year presentation. I will also be able to get back into the swing of things once this essay is out of the way as I find I don't work well when i have an essay to complete as I find it takes up all of my energy.