My plans to finish my Petrie shell in 2-3 week were completely optimistic as usual - I did very little knitting while on a (work) trip in Italy, as I was busy busy busy! I did manage to get most of the back done, but there's still a long way to go (should really have converted it to knitting in the round, I have decided that purling really slows me down). And to complicate matters further, I agreed to participate in collective knitting project.
Last month I joined the WI (women's institute) in an effort to meet some local women and participate in some fun (and crafty activities). The WI is quite an old institution, and has typically been associated with old ladies baking cakes, making jam, knitting and drinking tea. But in recent years it has seen a revival of sorts, with many 'new wave' WIs opening up around the UK, in particular in urban areas such as London, and attracting younger women. After a lot of research in the local WIs, I braved my first meeting back in February (for some cheese tasting!) and then joined properly in the April meeting, when we learned how to quilt.
A couple of weeks ago our president asked us if we wanted to participate in a collective knitting project, organised by the knitting group of the Institute of Ophthalmology in London. Their aim is to create a knitted retina, down to the cellular level: rods and cones (the photoreceptors, or simply the cells that detect light and offer visual information), retina ganglion cells (the cells that receive the visual information from photoreceptors and transmit it to the brain), bipolar cells (which transmit the information between photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells) and muller cells (a type of glial cell that support other neurons in the retina). For anyone interested, here is a schematic of approximately what this looks like. One of their members wrote the patterns to knit each cell type, and they were looking for volunteers beyond their knitting group to knit the various cell types.
I offered to make a couple of rods, and here they are. The pattern was really simple, and the knit quite fast, but as usual the sewing up was my downfall (and this is why I probably won't offer to knit any more!).
If I remember correctly, once the whole project is finished and assembled (around November), it will be on display at the Moorfields eye hospital in London (or the Institute of Ophthalmology), with a brief stint at a nearby gallery. Hooray of geeky knitting, I want more!
Last month I joined the WI (women's institute) in an effort to meet some local women and participate in some fun (and crafty activities). The WI is quite an old institution, and has typically been associated with old ladies baking cakes, making jam, knitting and drinking tea. But in recent years it has seen a revival of sorts, with many 'new wave' WIs opening up around the UK, in particular in urban areas such as London, and attracting younger women. After a lot of research in the local WIs, I braved my first meeting back in February (for some cheese tasting!) and then joined properly in the April meeting, when we learned how to quilt.
A couple of weeks ago our president asked us if we wanted to participate in a collective knitting project, organised by the knitting group of the Institute of Ophthalmology in London. Their aim is to create a knitted retina, down to the cellular level: rods and cones (the photoreceptors, or simply the cells that detect light and offer visual information), retina ganglion cells (the cells that receive the visual information from photoreceptors and transmit it to the brain), bipolar cells (which transmit the information between photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells) and muller cells (a type of glial cell that support other neurons in the retina). For anyone interested, here is a schematic of approximately what this looks like. One of their members wrote the patterns to knit each cell type, and they were looking for volunteers beyond their knitting group to knit the various cell types.
I offered to make a couple of rods, and here they are. The pattern was really simple, and the knit quite fast, but as usual the sewing up was my downfall (and this is why I probably won't offer to knit any more!).
.jpg) |
| Three rods! (one of the right is a bit wonky though) |
If I remember correctly, once the whole project is finished and assembled (around November), it will be on display at the Moorfields eye hospital in London (or the Institute of Ophthalmology), with a brief stint at a nearby gallery. Hooray of geeky knitting, I want more!
No comments:
Post a Comment