Cocoons

I'm only a couple of weeks away from the end of my current degree module - Personal Specialism. After playing with the idea of knitting trapped in water and water trapped in knitting, I trapped some more "water" in the form of glass nuggets, into layers of felt. Ignoring the fact that they look like some form of alien bug eyes, I was intrigued by the reflections contained by the protective layer of felt.

One of the other directives in this module was to make our work "site specific" and I chose to work with my garden or more specifically my vegetable patch. Many photographs and drawings ensued including these sketches of my Purple Podded Peas.

Playing with the idea in drawings, I trapped the glass nuggets and the reflections within the pea pods.

They seemed like cells contained within a protective cocoon... but what happens when they emerge and break free... floating awat like bubbles.

At last this was becoming "a personal specialism" and I started to link back to previous ideas of protection, relating to my children. The idea they they start enfolded within a protective pod or cocoon and gradually break free, still tied together, tied to the family until we finally have to let go, seemed to have potential. The strong feeling of maternal protection is closely connected with the need to give them freedom to break away. (In theory anyway... three of mine are still at home!)

Individual cells, cocooned, wrapped and connected together... possibly by knitting? I made some more resin beads, this time containing text as well as knitted fragments... some were fragments of knitted wire. The idea was that they were like cells containing information, secrets, memories...

and even the names of my children. (The text was cut from the old bible pages sent to me by Julia)

I didn't want to join the beads together with anything too obvious or obtrusive and decided knitted wire might work. Which is how I ended up with an ebay purchase of an extra large knitting dolly... and a weekend spent french knitting with wire.

Which I'm happy to say really has worked... at least it's how I envisaged it!

The next problem to solve was how to make the cocoons or pods. My tutor suggested I might link back to the garden theme and use paper made from plant material. I collected corn husks, chopped them, boiled them, blitzed them in the blender and made this quite interesting looking paper which I haven't a hope of moulding or stitching as it is so fragile! The colour was all wrong anyway!

Keeping with the idea of cocoons, I thought about using silk and I made several sheets of silk paper using different methods and supports. I thought I'd found a solution and liked the results but it s not strong enough to contain the beads and loses it shape.

So this morning it was back to knitting. I knitted a pod shape from pure wool... bunged it in the washing machine with the towels... and YES... this works and what's more I like it. The softness yet strength of the felted wool works perfectly for the protective cocoon.

Now I've only got to work out how to put it all together, knit some more cocoons and make several more yards of knitted wire tubing... I've got a couple of weeks! I'll let you see the finished results.