Armour part 4

The felt armour now covers the mannequin's torso. I never reattached the arm/shoulder piece that came off some time in March, instead I've been using it to test ways to apply gold leaf to felt, (answer - felt is not a smooth enough surface for gold leaf). The gold decoration in the pictures below is gold leaf, but it was applied to fusible interlining, cut to shape and then glued to the felt. (I can't afford the genuine gold leaf made from real gold so I bought some very reasonably priced fake gold leaf from Atlantis Arts.)

New year's knitting resolution

My new year's resolution to finish some knitting projects continues with a third pair of socks. Happy birthday, James! They are only 10 days late!

The pattern is a heavily-modified version of Knitty's bmp. (People on Ravelry are welcome to look at my Ravelry profile for the technical details.) Neither of the next two projects are socks, which is a relief; I think I might be done with socks for a really long time.

Graffiti

Here's the second new graffiti post. There's been good stuff on Scrutton Street, Curtain Road and Christina Street before - examples here and here - but this is the first time I've seen someone use that stretch of wall for one continuous scene. I've tried to capture the full effect by stitching my photographs together, (I'm currently using GIMP for tasks like this); the images below are larger than I'd normally upload so click on them to get a better look at the details:

I feel I may be missing a lot of references in all of this. I recognise tributes to Moebius and Adam Yauch in the Curtain Road section (middle image) and the Scrutton Street section (top image) looks like it might be a John Carter of Mars scene. But what about the pointy eared woman riding the horned cat or the big game hunter and the monster he's shot? Are these references to things I'm unfamiliar with or are they the inventions of the artist?

Graffiti

Apparently it's been nine months since my last graffiti post! Here's the first of two new ones - the recently repainted Queen of Hoxton on Curtain Road:

You can still see some of the old design - flowers and vines - one the metal shutter in the central picture, which seems strange. Was the bar open while it was being repainted or did the painters just get bored and skip the shutter?

What to do?

So, my sister sent me an amazing birthday present, two different versions of an Alexander Henry fabric called "Osteology":

They're so great! But what should I do with them? I need amazing projects for this amazing fabric!

Things to do in London in May

Three free things to do in London this month...

Saturdays and Sundays in May, beginning 5th May: Magnificent SevenDeadly Sins, a public art exhibition in the mausoleum at Nunhead Cemetery. Elisabeta Chojak-Mysko, Desiree Ickerodt, Jolanta Jagriello, Debora Mo, Ara Moradian, Jill Rock and Sara Scott each examine one of the seven deadly sins.

12th - 13th May and 19th - 20th May: Dulwich Festival Artists' Open House. Lots of artists and craftspeople in Dulwich will be opening their studios and houses to the public over these two weekends, but I want to give a special mention to Lucy Duke, who will be exhibiting on the first weekend.

14th - 19th May: East London Textile Arts will be exhibiting patchwork and embroidery at St Martin-In-The-Fields, Trafalgar Square.

More weird armour...

Over the weekend I designed a backplate to go with these breastplates and I spent today fitting together the vilene pieces. In order to make this I started off with small paper templates, (which I figured out through trial and error), I then enlarged these using a grid. I printed the enlarged templates onto the vilene using heat transfer paper, cut out the vilene, folded it into shape and sewed/pinned the pieces together. Not at all laborious and long-winded!