Category: franky

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More knitting – this time with noises

My friend Jonathan Bee has, for many years, combined knitting, crochet and other fibre arts to make the most incredible wild and whacky garments. Now he’s branched out and has created a huge art installation – The Garden of Eden Reclaimed – incorporating found objects with his fibre creations.

The installation includes a Tower of Babel for which he commissioned our friend Alistair to write a piece of music to emerge from the structure. I prevailed on friends and former colleagues (and offspring) to provide some of the languages.

And here it is!

The installation itself is at The Canal Gallery, Holyoke, Massachusetts.

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Cornwall

I still haven’t finished the bit-by-bit upload of pictures from Holy Island but the Cornish idyll required prompt action so I shoved up the lot earlier on, of which this is my favourite:

yesterday's racing crabs are recollected

Much crabbing was, um, crabbed. Many crustaceans were removed from the water, given temporary accommodation in a bucket and then returned to the sea either by being emptied out all in one go or by being forced to “race” down the beach, only for the entire process to be repeated the following morning. Oh the joys, for boys, of simply messing about on, in or near water.

The rest of the set is here, and for those who are not yet weary of my marvelous short films (surely everyone) there’s the excellent “five crabs and a piece of bacon” awaiting your viewing pleasure beneath the fold. I particularly recommend close attention to the non-vocal soundtrack. (Apart from the irritating high-pitched whining which was produced by the usual terrier suspect.)

Continue reading “Cornwall”

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Nature notes, aka antler-scratchingly fab

Last Friday we (spawn, dog and I) met up with Karen, Pete and Bernard in Richmond Park. Whilst there we came across this fine specimen of the resident red deer population. Since one of the benefits of a point-and-shoot over a DSLR is its video ability (unless of course you already own a Nikon D90) and since I’ve come to enjoy making 90″ videos of absolutely nothing happening at all I started filming.

The woofing and whining is, needless to say, Maizy. The toddler noises of excitement are Bernard. The voice of antler-envy is Pete’s.

Thus was born the neoPetelogism “antler-scratchingly”, an intensifier, I think you’ll agree, of delightfully descriptive power.

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Double diptych

There are pictures and there are words.

The pictures are HERE.

The words are, well, both HERE and HERE. And also, since these things have a habit of proliferating, elsewhere.

The internets are bloody marvellous.

(But obviously what they need to do with the words is have some form of tagging so a feed of every response can be made thus making navigation of the conversation slightly easier than being a hard-of-hearing person at a high-volume party. No?)

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CERN LHC FTW

Can’t. Resist. Black. Hole. Large. Hadron. Collider. Pictures. Sucking. In.

Oh what the hell. They’re incredible.

Click through to the full Big Picture series, and pay particular attention to the elegant accompanying text.

If that leaves you needing a primer, why not check this out for a particulate glossary:

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo

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Art, narrative and humanity

I can’t think of a better way to start, really, than with this:

This is satisfying on so many levels, not least of which is the self-knowledge which comes from the fact that I’m surprised and rather ashamed that I’ve never heard of Chris Abani before.

Also high on the list is the fact that it’s via Jeff, who’s a member of the lovely posse (and whose post has more interesting links).

It’s good to be here. Small, cosy, comfortable and out of the way. Radical pruning of dead wood. With unbounded thanks to the more than usually mercurial silver-fingered blog-gardner Mr Hg.

And, while I’m at it, here’s an explanation of franky: