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"This is the world's largest collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art"

So goes the opening line of at the web site of The Museum of Fabric Brain Art. It’s probably safe (but I can’t prove it) to say it’s the world’s only collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art. “As featured in Science and Knitting Help“.

This is just too exquisitely wonderful for words. Science and Knitting Help. Juxtapositions don’t get much better than that.

There’s a knitted brain, ffs. With a zip. At the corpus collosum. (So it says on this site which has more information about the artwork in question and an accompanying animation and poster. I would have just said that the hemispheres can be zipped together.)

Apparently Karen Norburg “began knitting a brain to kill time when she was undergoing clinical training in child psychiatry”. She’s also a Medical Research Fellow, when she’s not knitting. “Building a brain with yarn and knitting needles turns out to follow many of the same pathways as actual brain development,” she says.

That is so many kinds of holy wow I’ve actually lost count.

The original link is from the ever-gorgeous Mind Hacks. I’m really profoundly pissed off to be unavailable to be a participant in Mr Mind Hacks (aka Vaughan)’s research. The dates for volunteers to do their stuff are exactly those of my long-anticipated photo-etching course. To think, I might have been in with the chance of a brain scan all of my very own. Dammit dammit dammit!

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“This is the world’s largest collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art”

So goes the opening line of at the web site of The Museum of Fabric Brain Art. It’s probably safe (but I can’t prove it) to say it’s the world’s only collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art. “As featured in Science and Knitting Help“.

This is just too exquisitely wonderful for words. Science and Knitting Help. Juxtapositions don’t get much better than that.

There’s a knitted brain, ffs. With a zip. At the corpus collosum. (So it says on this site which has more information about the artwork in question and an accompanying animation and poster. I would have just said that the hemispheres can be zipped together.)

Apparently Karen Norburg “began knitting a brain to kill time when she was undergoing clinical training in child psychiatry”. She’s also a Medical Research Fellow, when she’s not knitting. “Building a brain with yarn and knitting needles turns out to follow many of the same pathways as actual brain development,” she says.

That is so many kinds of holy wow I’ve actually lost count.

The original link is from the ever-gorgeous Mind Hacks. I’m really profoundly pissed off to be unavailable to be a participant in Mr Mind Hacks (aka Vaughan)’s research. The dates for volunteers to do their stuff are exactly those of my long-anticipated photo-etching course. To think, I might have been in with the chance of a brain scan all of my very own. Dammit dammit dammit!

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The starving cat and the pizza Margherita (with a knitted back)

Cat is no longer denying himself food. He’s now so hungry that some time during the night he scaled nearly seven feet of bookshelves to hunt down the remaining half of a pizza Margherita I’d put up there out of harm’s way because there was no room in the fridge. He loves tomato, when he’s himself. Also bread. And cheese.

He must have knocked the whole thing off its perch and this morning we came down to find the board and covering on the floor but not an atom of pizza. Unfortunately I assume that, appealing though it is to think of the animals forming a cartoonesque team to predate on the leavings of humans, as soon as the pizza hit the floor it immediately disappeared into Maizy. She is certainly looking more than usually rotund today with that combination expression of self-satisfaction and hang-dog guilt that can only be seen on the face of, yes, a dog.

A final (this time round at least) trip to the vet early this morning. Another injection and a pill. He’s put on weight. He’s playing. He’s curled, as I type this, in his accustomed position on my lap with his head in the crook of my left elbow.

hmmm feeling a bit better now

His spine is still knobbly but there’s a layer of flesh, albeit thin, between it and his fur, which is back to its usual extraordinary silky softness.

So, one gets better, another gets worse. Secondspawn, who was home yesterday with a cold and sore throat, is home again today feeling worse. Still, nursing the sick is conducive to knitting. Yesterday I finished the back of the austenesque. It’s only short and aran weight wool knits up in seconds.

the back of the austenesque

On, on with the left front!

The possibility of a fur trim still remains. If Cat doesn’t stop eating outrageously expensive tins and sachets of choicest organic talking fowl hand reared by virgins in the garden of eden and get back to the dry stuff that comes in 15 kilo sacks, and soon at that, then he’s for the collar and cuffs.

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Cat update (with a knitted tail)

He had three more injections at the vet’s this morning, two pills and some kaoline paste. She was encouraged that he’d eaten a little last night. Said we could hold off on the drip until this afternoon and if he ate more during the day then maybe he wouldn’t need one at all.

Eating – refused sardines this morning before going to the vet. Deigned, some hours after we got back home, to eat something resembling duck paté but only when fed to him in a small, pre-warmed dish placed on the chair under the table he was occupying having earlier refused it from his bowl at room temperature on the floor. Hg – please attempt the most humiliating caption possible, although I’m afraid this isn’t a very inspiring picture.

cat eats

Puking – zero.

Crapping – twice, noisome and viscous at best but no sign of blood.

Vet bill to date – £356.41

Chances of saving money by cancelling pet insurance – zero.

Chances of Cat living on duck paté for the rest of his life – zero.

Chances of Cat ending up as cardigan trimming if he doesn’t go back to eating cheap dried food – very high indeed.

Despite the suggestion from acb below that it is demeaning not to knit a garment purpose designed for a cat-fur trim I am still of the opinion that the current WIP (the austenesque) would be ideal for such adornment. The yarn in question is thick and warm and has a multitude of white hairs in its makeup which would be well accentuated by Cat pelt, as can be seen in the picture below.

austenesque wip back

For those of a knitting disposition – the Kochoran tension square came up at 14 sts x 20 rows to 10cms on 6mm needles, so close to that of the recommended yarn (Louisa Harding Castello, 15 sts x 20 rows) that I started in good heart on the recommended needles. It may end up a little wider than the advertised garment but that is definitely a fault on the right side.

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The bile coloured carpet and the anorexic cat

It’s always been difficult to describe the colour of the carpet that runs along the corridor, up the stairs and along the upper corridor of this house. Not mustard, not buttercup. Sunrise? no. Baby-shit comes close. But now, thanks to Cat, I know the exact hue. It is cat-sick-bile coloured.

From this you might deduce three things. Firstly that Cat has been sick, a lot. Secondly that he’s been sick on the carpet. Thirdly that it doesn’t show up. These deductions are all correct.

In fact Cat hasn’t eaten anything since Thursday but despite this has managed to produce copious amounts of diarrhoea and the aforementioned vomit. He has lost weight. Lots and lots of weight. This morning as he crouched on my lap he was a bag of bones with a matted layer of fur on top. Despite my best efforts at home remedies, tempting food, tlc etc etc he had refused to eat anything, not even his most favourite prawn treats.

It’s distressing how distressing a sick animal is and Cat has been adding to the general gloom of an already gloomy household. Today I bit the bullet and took him to the vet. Luckily I have not cancelled the pet insurance and will only have to pay the excess for the treatment (in theory anyway).  “Does he like rubber?” the vet inquired as she examined him. I’ve already mentioned his rubber fetish – apparently it’s quite common with “oriental” cats but can lead to the ingestion of rubber bands which of course does them no good at all.

He stayed in at the vet’s. She couldn’t feel a blockage but he was clearly an ill cat and needed blood tests etc. If he was seriously dehydrated she said he’d have to stay in overnight on a drip. If not he would be better off back at home. “These oriental pedigree breeds, they’re a bit too special,” she said, tactfully.

I was called to pick him up in the afternoon. His temperature was normal, his bloods were normal, he was borderline dehydrated, had stubbornly refused to produce anything from either end for the vet to examine and equally stubbornly refused to eat anything she or the doting nurses tried to tempt him with.

So there he was, in his box, throat shaved, drugged to the eyeballs with anti-nausea meds, antibiotics, painkillers, worm and parasite killers, appetite stimulants and goodness knows what else. I was given a little brown paper carrier bag containing six (yes, six) different types of specialist food to tempt him with, sachets, tins and bags. “These oriental breeds,” she said (that phrase again…) “can get themselves into a spiral of not eating if they feel unwell and of course the longer it goes on the more difficult it is to break the pattern. They don’t do well staying overnight, these oriental breeds. Bring him back first thing in the morning. If he hasn’t eaten anything he will have to go on a drip tomorrow.”

Yes, I got the message. He’s a ridiculously expensive, overbred, highly strung, effete creature who’s basically suffering from anorexia and in the process of starving himself to death. Jeeez. Just what I need right now. To spend a hundred quid on a fucking stupid self-harming cat. Besides, nobody’s allowed to have anorexia in my house except me.

I opened various of the tins and sachets from the paper bag. No. No deal. No way. Some he deigned to sniff at, briefly. Others he refused even to approach. Suddenly inspiration struck. What was it he goes wild for? tinned sardines. I usually let him lick the tin, don’t actually give him any fish, but he obviously loves them. So I opened a tin.

Bingo.

He only ate a couple of teaspoons worth which I mixed with a tiny number of kibbles of his normal dry food, but at least it’s something. He then crouched very very still for several hours with his eyes closed and an unutterably weary expression on his face. But that’s better than throwing it straight back up.

So it’s back to the vet first thing in the morning to see if she thinks he needs x-rays or not because, given the number of rubber bands and small toys there are lying around the house which he is quite capable of having ingested, we can’t yet rule out some kind of internal blockage.

My main worry, though, is that I end up with a cat which will only eat tinned sardines. How on earth am I going to pay for that? He’ll have to go. Perhaps I could have a small white fur collar and cuffs on my austenesque cardigan which is now, finally, under construction.

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Louise Bourgeois rocks. Hard.

Too tired for words. Rather breakable right now. But it was just wonderful to go to the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Tate Modern with a wonderful friend. And… the camera!

cell 1

There is its shadow poking, in a rather sinister fashion, into one of Bourgeois’ “cells”.

Here’s part of another cell. That blue and that red seem to be very important colours in Bourgeois’ personal palette.

cell 2

I hadn’t seen any of her sewn fabric sculptures before. Incredibly powerful.

head

Apparently she met my all-time sculpture hero, Constantin Brancusi, in 1950. The inspiration is clear.

brancusi phase

Couldn’t resist the (belated) halloween appeal of this hanging sculpture, at least from this particular vantage-point. Move in any direction, though, and all was changed utterly.

hanging

The big (huge) spider sculpture which was commissioned for the opening of the Tate and dominated the Turbine Hall is back, straddling a substantial area outside the building. It is, of course, called Maman (mother). This spider is small, about the size of my camera, but was something I could relate to powerfully nonetheless.

spider

And here’s a picture that isn’t someone’s art, merely a street. But I liked the way the building and its reflection talked to each other.

mind the gap

It is so, so good to have the camera back. And I shall be going back to the exhibition if possible. It’s unmissable.

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Temporal borrowings

“Among the millions of nerve cells that clothe parts of the brain there runs a thread. It is the thread of time, the thread that has run through each succeeding wakeful hour of the individual.”

Wilder Penfield via Mind Hacks

And I celebrate my own life, remember many Octobers melting into misty Novembers. Dark afternoons, fireworks illuminating inky skies, fires roaring in hearths and gardens. Remember the excitement of sparklers shared with friends, my father lighting blue touch papers and retreating. Uneasy now in this time of change, and uncertain who it is about to turn 45. But steadied by the golden thread of all my Autumns.

Tall Girl at Smoke and Ash

I realized that the past is not linear, not forever frozen and unchangeable. Rather than being a line stretching back horizontally, personal time is a column, layering vertically, down below the present. It’s like a shifting column of different coloured fluids. One floating on top of the other. And when you change one layer at the bottom all the layers shift and change colour above.

Alistair Appleton at Burning Turban