Salaric

Last Saturday was knit in public day – I was still at the Cheltenham Science Festival working so I simply took my break at the knitting corner were they are knitting the mineral Perovskite as mentioned last week!

The project has grown!

I only managed one triangle in the end but I was extremely busy.

Interestingly some knitters still feel that it is inappropriate to knit in public – not entirely sure why – I tend to knit at events during my down time – if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t get very much done to be honest. Plus at home there tends to be a small child or two climbing all over me so knitting isn’t going to work very well in those conditions!

Though I did manage to get my eldest involved 🙂

My hubby sadly didn’t get a chance and was a bit worried his crochet wouldn’t count anyway.

At the Cheltenham Science Festival I meet a lady from Surrey University who was using knitting to explain chemistry. She had balls of wool, needles and patterns so that people could take part in knitting the unit cells of minerals (the little clusters of atoms that get repeated within a crystal structure).

The mineral is Perovskite which is found in abundance in the mantle 🙂 She is crowd sourcing knitters and crochet nuts to help make a huge model. The pattern is very simple. It is called The Perovskite Project – go and check it out!

Also there were huge beakers which looked cool with the balls of wool sticking out 🙂

So yes I am adding this to my knitting projects 🙂

I’ve not really kept up with the updates on the knitting! I’ve been going for almost two years now! I didn’t manage the sock challenge but will maybe reattempt next year! At the moment I am trying to finish off the Berry Bear blanket in time for Mary’s 3rd birthday but the circular needle is breaking so I am attempting a sugru fix with the knitting insitu (wish me luck!). But I also have a little niece due in August so have started knitting baby toys – just six balls to start with and then maybe a duck!

I am also knitting a toy for my eldest – it is going to be a creeper which is a creature from a game called Minecraft which the whole family are a bit obsessed with!

I tend to knit whilst watching films or at festivals. I really enjoy it but can’t over do it as it acts up my RSI which sucks 🙁

Incase anyone wants to follow/befriend me I am on Ravelry and I have an etsy shop where I sell off excess!

Also I hope to soon release the patterns for the molecular knitting which I put together for Science and Engineering Week earlier this year. I have lots of ideas (as always) of stuff to knit but am trying to finish projects off before starting new ones though I am going to attempt to knit Christmas presents and stuff this year so we shall see – I’ve packed away the olympic knitting and wont be getting it out until the Winter Olympics.

I did a lot of knitting around Christmas for friends weddings which was fun 🙂

This wonderful knitted poem was on display at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival – it is hung in the stair well of the Waterstones in town. It was knitted by the local knitting groups as part of an initiative set up by Centre Arts. The poem is Jonh Hegley’s The Price of Art in Luton from his collection Dog.

There is also a knitted homeless guy and his dog sitting on the blanket who are full of character.

A few days back on Google Plus I saw a post about a drawing challenge – now I was in the middle of not only trying to run a poetry writing drive but trying to do the drive myself as well as plan things for a science-art exhibition this month and start gearing up for festival season – so I thought I would join in 😀

Insane yes!

The challenge as set by Margareth Osju and is to draw 100 birds in 100 days – I am off course already lagging behind but hope to catch up!

There is a Google Plus circle and Margareth’s blog.

I shall be posting the pictures on my Picture Books and Illustrations blog Orange Monster.

This first one has been done as a request for my husband, most of the drawings will not be this style at all. The picture is called Gaia and is part of my visual poetry journal.

I have joined a site called Pinterest after some nagging from friends who want to see my cake pops on there. It is a lovely platform for sharing inspirational images and useful tutorials. I’ve only been on their about a week but am having lots of fun posting links to my websites – it picks up photos from the blog post but links back to your site. I have also been re-pinning some of the fantastic images and useful things on there. Unlike Facebooks share facility it is easy to tack back where the image has come from and it collects together all the pins (me adding things) and repins.

The pins/repins are all catagorised into boards which you give titles too. So far I have Gaia which are about nature and the Earth, Magiks which is pretty stuff with a bit of spiritual thrown in, Body Art; which is all the tattoos and nail painting and the like, Make and Do which is craft and DIY. Lastly there is one I’ve named Food and Drink which is about food and drink and parties 🙂

My user name is 5affy (Saffy with a five instead of the S).

I was very excited to find that people had already shared some of my photos on their – mainly from this and my cooking blog 🙂

I have a new camera thanks to birthday money from family. It is the best one I’ve ever had and was £80 reduced from £125. I had been wanting to take my photography forward slightly and was finding the old one very frustrating with it’s lack of function and optics. It was not as good as the first digital camera we had that we lost during the floods but it sustained me for 4 years of happy snapping and many an arty shot!

My photography site has been running for just over a year now and the more I look at my photos the more I see how I could improve them. It is still not one where you can remove the lenses (I don’t think anyway – I still need to read the manual).

I mainly use photography to illustrate my blogs – not least of which is this very blog. I take photos of the different stages of making things to help illustrate a point. I also like creating art within the photo itself and this has led me to be able to just go through my stock of photos for album covers and things.

The camera is also essential for the production of my Wiggly Pet stories or web-comic.

I am looking forward to playing lots with the camera 🙂

It’s 14 megapixel 18 X optical and has a bit sticking out the side to hold it which has already reduced the shake I tend to get on photos without flash and the pics it can take at low light levels is amazing 🙂

I made this little Visual Poetry booklet as a source of inspiration to other poets and writers I meet up with. I looked through magazines and selected the words I wanted – chosen for what they said and the type face used. I then cut strips of card using the bell scissors out of my shape cutting scissors. I punched a whole in the corner of each strip using a whole punch, using pritt stick I glued the words onto the card strips and selected some lovely varigated coloured eyelash wool which I used to tie it together.

Because I am running the WoPoWriMo (World Poetry Writing Month) website this year and am going to be meeting up with writers I’ve had my Tea pictures turned into postcards and stickers. I’m really pleased with how they have turned out 🙂

I love the thought of helping people with craft and discovered a few years ago the Craft-Activist Movement which is interesting in itself.

So when I saw a call for workshop ideas to help show people how important plants are to the planet I put forward my Upcycled Flowers project – it allows a talk on plants and is recycling at the same time!

I am excited that it is going to be used in the Botanical Gardens through out the UK 🙂

Yay! Go me!