I’m forever drawn back to working with yarn, I described it to my sister the other day as it ‘feeling like breathing’ to me. It’s also something I can do not matter what, whether ill in bed or perfectly healthy. When my hands flare from RA its actually good for me and keeps things moving. It’s like it’s become part of my bodies rhythm.

I first started when I was a child and had to take alot of time off school due to ‘stomach aches’ which would later reveal itself as Crohns. It’s been my only constant. I keep coming back to it.

Wanting to find my particularly way of expressing myself, my particular craft, MY thing, I’m starting to play with the idea in my head that my thing has been in front of me all along.

If this was it, it would be just a case of me knitting materials and that’s it, it would be a way for me to express ideas, thoughts and feelings like I did in the Interim show.

Use different needle sizes, differing yarns, knitting in ways you’re not ‘supposed to’, creating holes on purpose, dropping stitches, adding motifys or items as if it were canvas.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of getting a spinning wheel which I’ve always wanted to. I’ve found a local woman who teaches you how to spin 1-1 and am going to book a session next month, potentially at the beginning of the next academic year I will buy myself a spinning wheel after seeing if it fits me. Then my craft becomes bigger. More things to play with.

Spinning yarn out of strange materials, not necessarily fibre, what can I experiment with? What is the weirdest thing I can spin?… it opens up a lot more. I also live right next to a sheep farm, so I can source VERY locally and incorporate that into my work.

The current piece I’m knitting (above) is taking shape as it goes, i’m not giving it a set plan, though I imagine it hanging, draping from the ceiling, with ‘things’ (what things?) tied to the holes in the yarn. I’m using 15mm needles with a thinner yarn, potential I’m going to move up to 25mm at some point in the process.

It doesn’t limit me either, because like in my interim piece I can include other ‘objects’ in my pieces. Installations using fibre.