The Knitty Gritty

After attending a 3D lecture, I was inspired by the concept of finger knitting. I felt that the long lines of knit which were shown to us looked really like the spine. I also thought a
that the stiches looked like the vertabrae. I really liked the way the knitting moved too, and felt that it was also like the spine in this respect. So. . .I decided to try it out for myself! I watched a few tutorials on youtube in order to get the hang of it, then I had a think about what materials I wanted to knit. As bones are such natural objects, I wanted to continue this natural theme and use a natural material for my knitting. I began to work with a thick twine, but found that this was too hard to work with. . . it kept turning my fingers blue!!! I then began to work with raffia, a straw like material. This was perfect! And so the process of knitting began. I'd have to admit that I thourghly enjoyed it, it's really relaxing, fun and the product is just beautiful. I knitted everywhere-on the bus, watching TV, in college.

 I made about 6 lines of knitting that were about 7 foot long each. . .phew! My orignal plan was to suspend the lines using fishing line, however when I tried this out I thought that it looked really poor. The lines of knitting just looked like party streamer and nothing like the "S" shape of the spine. So I had to come up with a new way of using the finger knitting to explore the movement of the spine. After speaking to a tutor, I began to think about making the lines of knit into the actual shapes of vertabrae by looping and tying them. I then plan to make some type of sculpture with these. . . however this is a work in progres so I'll have to do a bit more thinking about it!