Knitting Inspiration

Those of you familiar with my other work at Greenwich Market will know how much I love looking through old knitting patterns from the 1940s for inspiration. But it’s not just the patterns I love looking at – I also love old photos. The Mary Evans photo of the kids looking through the fence featured on the home page is a great image – I never get tired of looking at it.  That hat is just marvellous and has inpired many a pixie hat on my stall.  And the sandal and sock combination…. What can I say!?

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Well this is one from my own family archive and I think it would be amazing to replicate that jumper my dad’s wearing on the right there – with all its rips and wear-n-tear.

I also love the large expanse of wall the photographer has managed to capture…..

RA Summer Exhibition infiltrated by Art Tourists!

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It was the final day of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy today. In a break with tradition this year the RA allowed the public to take photographs in the galleries. I have mixed feelings about this – I can’t remember how many times I’ve been in an art gallery and wanted to take a photo. Not necessarily of a painting or sculpture, but of a view through a doorway, a person or a detail. Generally, it hasn’t been allowed, so I was really surprised to see people taking pictures.  And it just felt, well – wrong! I asked the staff and there were various explanations, but basically it looks like most of the artists signed an agreement allowing photography – except for a minority… the big names like Tracey Emin managing to stand their ground.

So in amongst the people jiggling their way through the gallery to get a better look at something that had caught their eye were a number of art tourists, hardly pausing for breath while they snapped another painting and moved on. Art in a hurry with no time to stand and appreciate the work, the meaning or the skill – just another digital image to look at later. Why bother? Why not just look up the artist on the internet – you can easily see them all on the RA’s website. But how can you possibly appreciate it that way? One guy took a photo of one of Tom Phillips’ versions of ‘A Human Document’ almost at a run without seeming to look at the work while he pressed the button on his phone. Did he realise it was one of a series? Did he know which version?

Anyway, it took me a little while, but I did whip out the camera in the end and take a couple of shots. I’ve always wanted to take a photo of the grates in the Royal Academy….

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Brighton Beach Bubble

PC_bubble_webWhen I was young and didn’t need much sleep, the current Mr Jenkins & I used to spend hours on the seafront at Brighton watching the colours change with the rising sun and trying to capture them on film. We had some good results, and we had some failures…. All on photographic paper, developed, probably by SuperSnaps, at great expense. Wish we’d had the flexibility of a mobile phone with its digital camera and massive amount of memory then…. Having said that – this little bubbly-beauty was the only one snapped by Mr Jenkins last weekend…