CrumpArt

Nine and a half years ago, I met Mr Crumpet.

My friend was seeing this guy who played drums in a band, and she owed me a favour, so took me out for a night on the town to one of their gigs. Mr Crumpet was also friends with the band, and that’s how we met.

Van was the drummer in question. He started a degree in painting at RMIT that year, and even then he was very, very good at what he did. We don’t see each other all that often these days, but it’s always cool to catch up at shows and stuff. We’ve even shown work together once before.

Yep, I’ve had an art show with the nephew of the Prime Minister of Australia. The one degree of separation is kinda trippy…

Van is a quiet, reserved, smart, hardworking, polite, extremely talented and really a lovely person. His politics only really come to the fore in his artwork. I’m finding all this press so awesome. Go Van!

It’s been crazy times lately. Things I’ve planned on blogging about. Things I’ve forgotten to blog about. Things I’ve blogged about in my head and then thought I’d actually blogged about. Things I haven’t blogged about and things I won’t blog about. Some bloggable things happened during the things I won’t blog about, and as a result, I won’t be blogging those other things either. Confused yet?

So you’ll have to settle for a blog post told around flash learning curve experiments.

First, Helena’s drinks. Helena, the one on the left, was our supervisor at work. She recently left, hence the drinks. On the right is Violeta, who will be celebrating her 21st birthday on Saturday night, and in the middle is Emily, who I helped enable buy a Canon camera body and another lens when she saw the photos I’d taken with ours. This photo was taken on a dark cold night in a dark bar with the 50mm lens and the standard camera flash. I’m slightly allergic to flash, considering how horribly it’s abused most of the time, but these came out alright.

I’ve been busy at uni as well, not just with making artwork, but with all the logistical stuff that comes with the third year territory. This was taken with the external flash (much, much, much nicer than the camera flash), although I just did the setup. Obviously, considering I’m in the picture, someone else was pressing the button. This is one of the batch from our Printmaking Auction Photo Session, which preceded the more intense Taking Photos Of Everyone Else’s Work For The End Of Year Show Proposal That I’m Also Helping Write Session. The Auction is the 15th of August. Melbournians, mark it on your calendars now.

More experimenting with the external flash. It’s a portrait within a portrait!

I bought some yarn a while ago to make the Mister a new hat, as his first one wore out. It’s lovely having someone who appreciates the handknits, and even gets grumpy about not having a jumper yet. Right now he just has this one hat left — I knit it a long time ago but never remembered to take a picture. I think he looks rather lovely in it.

And finally, a birthday. A second birthday for my nephew Thomas. He’s very cute. And I think I’m getting the hang of the external flash… yay!

I’ve just found out that World Wide Knit In Public Day is the same day as the 2008 Melbourne Zombie Shuffle. How can I choose??!?

I’m thinking I could go to the shuffle as a knitting zombie, complete with i-cord brains and knitting needles poking out in various places. Whaddaya think?

(m1k3y, will you be zombifying yrself?)

When I went to feed the dogs this morning, they weren’t there. After freaking out and searching for about half an hour, they finally heard me and came sprinting into the yard. I still can’t figure out how they got out, and am going to be extremely late for my animation class on the one day that I would have been on time.

So, to cheer myself up, I just watched The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics again. We were shown it in class last week, and it has to be one of my favourite things ever.

Part of my project this semester involves spinning yarn and knitting it into lace circles based on Elizabeth Zimmermann’s pi shawl pattern. To put it in the vaguest terms possible, it’s a scienc-y, mathematical meditation-y mandala thing — a reflection on creation and the clash of scepticism and belief. I’ll be printing on each piece of knitting repeatedly to build up colour, and will also try printing with them on my paper works. Next semester they’ll be ripped out and made into something new, playing into my destruction/creation theme.

I started with a bag of wool that I already had, but it hadn’t been carded and was just too lumpy and uneven for what I wanted. I could have hand-carded it, but the thought of processing 500g of fibre that way made me want to cry real tears. Instead, I paid a visit to the Yarn Barn in Coburg to see what they had, and came out with 700g of processed superwash merino that had already been pre-drafted and wound onto a cone. Freaking score!

It still took me a few skeins to get my tension right for the project I have in mind next semester, but I’m still using the first efforts this time around, and will use them for a different piece later.

Here’s what the singles needed to look like…

And here they are plied.

And posing with Neil Gaiman’s signature in my sketchbook (yep, definitely fangirl.)

I’m really quite disgustingly proud of my spinning job. It took at least two full days to spin the singles, and another half day of plying just for two skeins. The knitting feels like flying in comparison.

Went to the Convention Centre very early in the morning yesterday to see Neil Gaiman speak. Mr C teased me all the way there about being a total fangirl because he saw the present I had to give to Neil at the book signing. For the record, I gave him a little handmade blank book, and one of these. And yes, I am a total fangirl, but I also just thought it would be a nice thing to do.

Today I’m blowing off my theory tutorial taking one of my uni friends along to the State Library to see Neil talk again — one of the benefits of going to school in the centre of the city. I’m sure my lecturer will understand.