This afternoon I had to take a trip into the city for a meeting. Whilst I was there I took the opportunity to visit the long anticipated Nottingham Contemporary.

I’ve mentioned this new art gallery before in my ‘Blanket of Ideas’ post and I’d been looking forward to it opening since I heard about it. Not least because their very first exhibition is David Hockney which was not a disappointment, especially ‘A Bigger Splash‘.

The other thing I was hoping to see was the Blanket of Ideas and sure enough it was there with my little shell stitch crochet square right in the middle! That put a grin on my face for the rest of the day I can tell you :) Lisa Anne Auerbach has a really good photo of it on her website ‘The Little Red Blog of Revolutionary Knitting‘.

If you’re in Nottingham visit the gallery. I’m sure I’ll be spending lots more time there.
www.nottinghamcontemporary.org

Nottingham Contemporary is going to be one of the largest contemporary art spaces in the UK, opening on 14th November. How lucky we are to have it in our Midlands city!

Nottingham Contemporary have been working with artist Lisa Anne Auerbach who uses knitwear as a way of provoking good-humoured political discussion. She has created a line of knitwear called ‘Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It‘ for Nottingham Contemporary showing various slogans, song lyrics and sayings.

Following on from this Nottingham Contemporary are planning to exhibit the ‘Blanket of Ideas‘, a huge red and black patchwork blanket with squares knitted and crocheted by Nottingham people, expressing their own political messages. Of course I couldn’t not get involved in this. My square is crocheted in shell stitch which represents a concern for the damage we’re doing to the world’s oceans through over fishing, climate change and pollution.

I loved the shell stitch so much I decided to make something with it that I could keep, so here’s the beginnings of a new winter scarf. It’s getting pretty chilly here now so I’d best get cracking, I’ll need it very soon.

I was going to post a link to a ‘how to crochet shell stitch’ resource but when I started looking I realised that there are many different ways to create a shell stitch. Do a search on Google or YouTube and you’ll see what I mean!

This is a bit of a delayed update. In fact I’ve been neglecting this little blog due to being busy at work and the suchlike. But we’re not here to talk about work so here I am with a little flurry of posts this week. In between my chores I have managed to fit in a bit of sewing, shopping and crochet ;o)

First of all I was really pleased to see my patchwork square on the plinth on 12th August. Here is a screenshot from the video.

You can watch the whole hour of Hazel’s time on the plinth with the patchwork at the One and Other website.  As well as a blanket there was a long piece of bunting made from the squares and mine was on the bunting. You can see it on the video at about 11 min 45 secs.

Hazel also read out my message “Our Actions Have an Effect” (at 20 mins 10 secs) and Claire’s (of Pinky and Boo) message straight afterwards. It was really exciting and moving to listen to all of the messages from women of the East Midlands. Watch it here: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Hazel_E

“Our actions have an effect”

In my last post I talked about the patchwork quilt project for the Fourth Plinth living monument. Well, here’s my patchwork square and a little explanation for my message from the plinth… Continue Reading »

If you’re interested in art, or even if you’re not, you’ve probably heard about Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project ‘One & Other‘. If you haven’t heard about it the commission involves a different member of the public standing on the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days, to make a living monument. Each individual may use their hour on the plinth as they wish.

I’m really excited to be, in a very small way, part of of this amazing piece of art history by creating one patchwork square (of many) for a quilt which will be displayed on the plinth to celebrate women in the East Midlands. Continue Reading »