So it's done, 400 bunnies made.  I see them in my sleep, they're behind my eyelids whenever I shut my eyes, but I think it's been worth the labour as the feedback from the installation has been very positive.  I wanted to take discarded garments and make them into something people just couldn't help but want to cuddle, and in that I've succeeded.

The installation is on display at the Eden Project until the 12th April as part of Hevva! Hevva! After that, who knows - maybe I'll have to live with several hundred bunnies for awhile, but there's a permanent record of them all at BunnyLove.  I do need to write up my findings and feeling while they are still fresh, but right now I'm enjoying a bunny-free, work-free day for the first time in ages.  

Time for tea.

I've just calculated that in order to have enough bunnies for my project, I need to make at least six a day!  EEP!!  Got my quota done for yesterday, but today is a Cake and Catsuits day, and later I have to get the clown outfit ready for Sunday.  This is going to b a struggle.  I can see I'll be sewing on the train tomorrow.

The silly/serious art continues.  Last year, I was selected to take part in a series of short expeditions around Cornwall as part of Cape Farewell's Short Course programme.  Following on from the expeditions, we are holding an exhibition in April to share with others what we learnt on our adventures. One of my particular concerns is with patterns of consumption, especially that of cheap clothing, and the human and environmental damage resulting from throwaway fashion.

So...what to make?  I've settled on using fabric scavenged from Lost Property to turn into small, slightly wonky bunnies. Waste multiplying. In order to have impact, there needs to be many, many small,slightly wonky bunnies.  In the same way that one small, slightly wonky terracotta 'gorm' is but kinda cute, a full 40,000 of them are intensely moving. Clearly I can't make 40,000 bunnies - not simply because there isn't the time, and I'd go slightly mental, but there wouldn't be the space.  However, I can try to make a multiple of 40,000 so am aiming to have 400 by the 28th March.  I'm thinking 400 would make a goodly pile... After the exhibition finishes the bunnies will get sold off to fund an art residency in Egypt aimed at raising awareness of marine pollution. 

So far, I've made 56!  This morning, I tipped them out onto the bed to see how the pile was coming along...



That's about 14% of the total...currently they fit into a single shopping bag, but it won't be long before I'm storing them under the bed, stuffing them behind the sofa, and hiding them in the fridge... 



        

I've been asked about my current college work, and one aspect of it is being part of the global craftivist activity 'yarnbombing' - basically it is about taking pieces of knitting and setting them free is a (usually) urban environment to bring a textile softness and colour to the dreariness of street furniture. For me, interesting debates around the practise include the uses of women's craft activity - many detractors claim that if people have such free time they should be knitting for charities, such as babies and soldiers, not 'wasting' it on meaningless art. I find such comments fascinating and frustrating, and deeply revealing on an expectation of what women should do with their free time, to be given selflessly in service to others...thoughts please? 

Anyway, I find deep joy in decorating the occasional lampost with a piece of knitted acrylic.  I feel it compliments my crocheted coral pieces, so a few images below to explain what I mean...

Some cotton thread crochet pieces on a Dorset beach - natural forms made from Victorian pattern techniques

It's nearly time for the clown service in Dalston again - weekend after next, in fact, and I feel that Lady Lacrimosa should venture out in her pom-pommed silver slippers again...

In point of fact, the slippers Dorothy wore were not ruby, but silver, so I often have to stifle the urge to sing 'there's no place like home', whenever I'm wearing them.  

I still feel guilty in claiming Dalston Kingsland as the tube station was shut that Sunday long ago, so I never truly passed through the barriers.  

So that's it, time to book train tickets, pack the diamonte eyelashes and head to the big city...maybe make a few pom-poms on the journey...



and maybe some yarnbombing over the weekend - I have a urge to crochet up an umbrella:



 

At the top of the Bakerloo line, sometimes and sometime not part of the Bakerloo Line (and now on the Overground), snuggled in a little dip in the fares zones on the tube map, sits Watford Junction. So far is it from the loving embrace of the familiar travel zones, that emotionally speaking it might just as well be a little way before the Andromeda galaxy,it is a station where 'special fares apply' which is the transport equivalent of approaching the singularity at the heart of a black hole, where special physics apply and even Einstein couldn't be sure what would happen.

To add to the sense of mystery, there as only one place to visit this far 'up': Bletchley Park. According to my records, I was there in 2009, but for some reason I didn't record the date, but it was after Ruislip Gardens in March, and before Mill Hill East/Finchley Central were collected on the 9th August. All else is conjecture.

Some lovely signage at the station:



Bletchley Park...it's the bombe!  (sorry..)


Bletchley Park is a place I have long held romantic visions of. During the Second World War it was the home to Britain's codebreaker's, and many of the thousands working there had no understanding of the true significance of their jobs. And they kept their mouths shut - for years afterwards in many cases, never speaking of the incredible important work they did in bringing the war to a quicker end, and in our favour.

In this age of tweets and bloggers, can you imagine the same? Maybe something of similar importance goes on now, and ten thousands workers busily defeating terrorism Don't Tell, but I suspect not. Something has changed in our national psyche, in that we live out lives constructed through our social-media identities. Even generationally, it is different between my sense of my world, and that of my 18-year-old nephew, with a need to constantly describe and display one's life for exterior scrutiny and validation. My phone and home server both died on my late last year, and for the best part of six weeks I had no internet / mobile service at home and mostly it was wonderful. A feeling that is of course at odds with my returning to blogging about my tubewhoring around the city.

( In memory of Alan Turing )
I took squillions of photos, but the computer has hidden them, so only a few of inside of machines for your delectation after the cut

( wiring heaven )

and finally...obligatory, proof shot from the station (which for some reason, won't rotate left):

...firstly, I know the quote is wrong, so don't fret over it. It's just that Wednesday is usually my one free day of the week - hence I'm still in my flannel paisley jammies at midday day - but have failed so far in getting on with anything constructive despite all my plans to the contrary...However, I'm due to be on the local radio in a bit, and the idea of doing that in my jim-jams is appealing...

Secondly, I know that recent posts have been nothing more than a bewailing about the lack of posts. 'For recursion, see recursion'. Suffice to say, I am still going on the project, just low on funds and time. I have become slightly obsessed with knitting and yarn-bombing, and most of my work has been in my local area in deepest, dampest Cornwall, but there is hope on the horizon that I'll be able to get back to London before the end of February to continue my travels. Meantime there are stations that I haven't blogged yet, due to tech failures, illness and too many deadlines making my head spin and traumatically apathetic in the face of Too Much To Do.

So I make a promise. An update every Wednesday, at the very least...

I have been hiding in Cornwall, and it's time in 2012 to rejoin the world.

Oh my darlings, it has been a dark and rainy few years deep in the Cornish countryside. Have you missed the rambling - have you even noticed my absence?

I have been quiet and impoverished, wrestling with mad crochet and even madder schedules sucking away time and life. But a new dawn breaks! I have changed jobs - again - which means a greater freedom in my timetable to combine work, college and this mythical work/life balance thingy that people speak of in hushed tones.

Still means I have to exercised mammoth juggling skills but without resorting to wearing jester rags I should be able to get tubewhore up and running again in the coming weeks and months.

Meanwhile, while I've been hiding in cupboards avoiding the Big Bad World Outside, what has everyone been up to - short precis of the last year in comments please - biscuits and postcards to be issued at my whim!

More on the catching up...

Shepherd's Bush has a positive embarrassment of riches when it comes to stations. The only one left to bag is the Shepherd's Bush on the Overground. There's supposed to be a Christmas market on at Kensal Rise which is just up the line on the Overground, so figure that might be an interesting destination and tidies up both Kensal stations as well as the last of the Bushes...



( pictures of the Shepherd's Bush station, and onwards up the line )<

We drink proper builder's tea and tuck into a fried breakfast before getting back on the train up to Gospel Oak.

It's been so very long, and I'm so behind on entries that it is only through looking through the photo files that I can trigger any memories of where I've been on the system.  I blame this lapse of synapses on two things: firstly, I visited so many stations on the system already that they begin to blur into each other, and secondly I'm getting on these days - I've crossed that great divide between youth and encroaching senility and it can't be expect for the ole grey cells to be quite as active as they once were...

...but back in early March, before I hit my ovary-shrivelling 40s there was a short expedition to the farthest reaches of the Central and Piccadilly Lines.  Even with looking at the pictures, it took a long conversation with gmul to jog a few impressions of the journey.  Suffice to say Sudbury Hill and some of the Ruislips weren't that memorable.  Looking at an A to Z map, still not sure we have proper recollection. 

Looking down from street level:


( Heffalumps and Wozels )