The Craft Council Gallery's Annual Member Exhibit

I'm very pleased to announce that some of my work will be on display in the Craft Council Gallery's upcoming Annual Member Exhibit! The exhibit's opening reception is this Friday (June 27th) from 7-9pm and the exhibit will run throughout the summer. More information can be found here.

There will be some amazing work on display there - be sure to stop by and check it out!

What's Next

Well, the end of the exhibition is drawing near, and my official graduation ceremony is looming in the not so distant future of next week. I'd like to thank everyone who made it down to the show to see my whale, and encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to do so! The exhibition will remain open until 6pm on Saturday, June 14th.

And while I'm on the topic of thank yous, there are a number of people to whom I'd like to extend my gratitude for helping with this project in whatever way they did. To the staff at the Anna Templeton Centre, my fellow classmates, and my instructors, especially my knitting instructor, for being understanding and accommodating throughout this whole process; to my friends for liking my Facebook posts and listening to me complain about the difficulties of knitting a whale; and to everyone who offered advice about whale building and blog writing: I am so grateful for all of your help and support. Thank you.

So what's next for Woolly? Well, I'll have to dismantle him once the exhibition ends, but only temporarily. I have more opportunities to exhibit in the works, so keep checking back for updates on where Woolly might end up next!

And what's next for this blog? And for me? After I graduate, I'll have the summer off, and then I plan to return to the Textiles program part-time in the fall to study embroidery and surface embellishment. I discovered a love for embroidering this year throughout the creation of my non-whale pieces of work, and I'm eager to improve my skills and learn more. I'll continue to update this blog with the progression of my textiles adventure, as well as any whale news when it happens.

Detail of "Mockingbird"

"Red Fox Teacups and Saucers" photo by Noah Bender

So, I Knit a Whale.

Well.

The exhibition is open, and the whale is done. Apologies for not posting for the past couple of weeks, but I was working on the whale day and night trying to get it finished in time for the opening of the exhibition!

Putting a few finishing touches on

So, the exhibition opened on Saturday with great success, and I'm thrilled to say that I've had nothing but great feedback on the whale so far. This project has taken over my life for the past several months in a very huge way, and I'm so proud of it now that it's finally done.

The whale, along with the rest of the artwork in the exhibition, will remain on display until June 14th. The exhibition is at the Anna Templeton Centre at 278 Duckworth St., and is open 12pm-6pm daily, and 12pm-8pm on Thursdays and Fridays. I'd encourage anyone in the St. John's area to stop by and check out what I've made, as well as the amazing work that my classmates have done. 

There are also several special events that take place throughout the course of the exhibition that are sure to be lots of fun:

Fashion Boutique and Cocktail Party: Thursday, June 5th 7-9pm

An evening to showcase the amazing one-of-a-kind garments featured in our graduate fashion show. Try them on, have a cocktail, and find a lovely new addition to your wardrobe!

Free School: Saturday, June 7th 2-4pm

Stop by and take part in a series of informal textile workshops for all levels of experience! Includes lessons in cable knitting, rug hooking, natural dyes, and more. Free and kid-friendly.

Secret Garden Secret Kitchen: Saturday, June 14th 1-4pm

"Join us for a special food celebration on closing day with tapas style plates and refreshing summer beverages to enjoy while you take this last chance to wander through the exhibition. $12"

I'd also like to point you in the direction of textile artist Judy Cooper's blog. Judy has featured the progress of my whale on her blog a couple of times throughout the process. She came to the exhibition opening on Saturday and took some photos of our work and wrote a lovely post about the show, which you can read here.

Check back within the next week or so for a post about the direction this blog will take now that the whale is done! In the meantime, I hope to see you at the exhibition... please get in touch if you'd like to go at a time when I will personally be there.

Back at It

I've returned from Montreal, and am back working on the whale with plans to finish the knitting this week.

Here's a couple of shots of one of the sides being blocked:

Also, I had an interview with CBC today about the whale project, which will air tonight on Here and Now at 5:30pm Newfoundland time!

Knitting the Sides of the Whale

So I've been working on knitting the side panels for the whale:

Each panel tapers on either end. It remains at it's widest point, 30 inches, for 3 feet in the middle of the panel. This 3 foot length will span the distance between the 2 largest ribs (which are equal size). 

So that I'd be able to place that 3 foot section precisely when it goes on the whale, I tied marker points on either side of the panel at the beginning and end of the 3 foot section:

Everything was going pretty smoothly until I was one foot from the end of one of the panels. A screw had come loose from the underside of the carriage (the thing that slides back and forth across the knitting machine), and caught on one of the needles, causing it to bend:

Normally when a needle gets bent, you just take it out and replace it. This one had gotten so messed up that it was stuck inside the knitting machine, and ended up taking a couple of hours to get it out.

And then I had to figure out where the screw had come loose from the underside of the carriage, which looks like this:

And has about a billion screws.

But, anyway, I finally got it all working and continued with the knitting. Here's a finished side panel, ready to be blocked:

And here's a shot of my new wool, waiting to be dyed (which will have to wait until I get back from my trip in a week!)

Work on the Whale Continues

With my other projects (mostly) complete and my final critique behind me, I can now return to work on the whale. My wool has arrived, so I'll be working on starting to dye that hopefully over the next few days.

In terms of the actual knitting that remains, like I've mentioned, I have about one third of the whale knit.  I had to knit the front half of the belly seperately from the back half in order to make the throat grooves, but the sides and top of the whale don't have any specific texture requirements like that. That means that  I should just be able to knit the panels in 28 foot lengths that will span from one end of the whale to the other. Each of these panels can be up to 30 inches wide, so I'll have to knit four of them. They'll each be the full 30 inches at their widest point in the middle of the panel, and then taper on either end.

I'm aiming to get two of these panels knit over the course of the next several days, as I'll be heading out of town on Saturday for a week!

Aaaand another reminder to take a peek at the blog for my graduating class and see what everyone else has been up to! Our graduation events are comprised of a fashion show on May 28th at the LSPU Hall in St. John's, and an exhibition that opens on May 31st at the Anna Templeton Centre and runs for two weeks, where my whale and my other work will be on display!

Whale Belly on the Whale

Sewing on the second half of the whale belly with Sarah:

The Other Half of the Whale Belly

It's the last week of the semester before my final critique, and things are pretty crazy here at school, so blog posts this week will have to be short and sweet. Like me.

Anyway,

I knit the rest of the whale belly! Here's some math:

Basically it was knit in two triangular-ish panels which were then sewn together.

Unfortunately, while I was knitting these pieces, I got to the point where I ran out of the light grey wool, so I couldn't knit them to the full length they were supposed to be. I'll have to wait until my new wool arrives and I can get it dyed before I'll be able to fully complete the underside of the whale.

So, then I blocked it:

I did get this piece sewn onto the skeleton today, but haven't gotten all my pictures uploaded and sorted through yet, so I should have those up within the next couple of days!

Knitting Goes on the Whale

Well, I got the throat grooves sewn onto the skeleton today! I had some help from my super knitting instructor, and it went pretty quickly.

It's just basically sewn on with big stitches that go through the garbage bags and around bits of the snow fencing. Once the side pieces that will go above it are knit, they will overlap the edge of the throat piece and be sewn on with nicer stitches that will be a bit more hidden.

The big puckers that run down the middle of the throat are basically anchor points used to center the knitting on the belly. Once more knitting is on the whale, they'll be cut out and the throat should have a nice curved shape underneath the whale.

Next up: knitting the rest of the belly!

Garbage Bags on the Skeleton

Quick little picture update on the skeleton, which is about half covered in garbage bags at the moment!

And the skeleton just looks really cool on the inside:

Flippers!

Today I knit and blocked the whale's pectoral fins, or flippers. Minke whale flippers can be up to about 1/8 of the total body length, so my whale's are 3 and a half feet long, and 14 inches wide at their widest point. Minke pectoral fins are also generally dark on either end, with a light strip in the middle, which is how I knit mine.

I knit a rectangular piece for each flipper that, once it's blocked, I'll cut into the correct shape. I think that once the flipper shape is cut out, I should have enough of the dark knitting left over to make the dorsal fin.

I had done a tension swatch for the light grey wool when I was knitting the throat pieces, and just worked off of that information to knit the flippers without doing a separate swatch for the dark wool. Mistake. The dark stuff ended up knitting at a tighter tension than the light grey, and the flippers turned out a few inches shorter on either end than they were supposed to... 

Fortunately, with a bit of semi-aggressive blocking, they ended up the right size!

Outline of flipper shapes on the blocking table

Blocking the flippers

Making a Whale Throat

9054 rows of knitting later, I finished knitting the throat grooves.

Thank god for row counters...

All eleven throat pieces

I used 16 skeins of wool to knit these pieces, which probably cover about one seventh of the total whale surface area, so at this point I'm quite certain that I currently do not have enough wool to complete the project. So, unfortunately, I'm going to have to order more wool and more dye.  This was definitely a frustrating realization to have to come to so late in the term. But, that's that, I guess. Whales. They're big.

Anyhow, back to the throat grooves.

Once I had them all knit, it was time to sew them together.

The sewing took about three hours. I didn't want to block the throat until after it had all been sewn together, so I had to really hold down the edges to keep them flat while I was sewing, meaning I could only really sew a few inches at a time.

By the end, the whole thing had gotten pretty heavy, and also, incredibly warm while it was lying in my lap.

So here it is, all sewn together, before I blocked it:

And the biggest table for blocking was luckily exactly twelve feet long, so the knitting fit on it perfectly:

I only wanted to lightly block it, so I pinned it out while it was dry, and then sprayed it with water to just get the knitting slightly damp.

I let it dry overnight before taking the pins out this morning. It turned out great!

Starting to KNIT!

I started to knit the whale.

I began with the whale's throat grooves, which I am knitting in the light grey wool. They run a little less than half the length of the whale, and will cover approximately the bottom third of the circumference of the whale's body.

The throat grooves are all going to be knit separately, and then sewn together without being blocked. Leaving them unblocked will allow them to curve outwards slightly between each seam, giving them that 'throat groove' look.

Each throat piece is 12 feet long, which, at this particular tension, works out to be 864 rows of knitting. They all start out at six inches wide, and gradually taper to two inches by the end of the groove.

Here's a picture of me doing a decrease of one stitch, which is how the taper is created:

And, here's a throat piece all stretched out:

And a pile of throat grooves with mug for scale:

I'm really excited to have started knitting. I am having some concerns about not having enough wool, but it's cool to have finally gotten started on what is, for me, the most appealing part of the project. I plan to have the throat groove knitting finished by the end of the weekend, and likely start on the tail and fins next week.

Knit Fast Dye Yarn

While I've been busy building a whale this semester, the rest of my graduating class has also been working hard on some very cool stuff in preparation for our final exhibition and fashion show "Knit Fast Dye Yarn".  You can check out our class blog here, and see what they've all been up to!

The beginnings of our knit poster!