Get Your Rabbits Mated Before Christmas

One night in Props Bar at the Banff Center Giles Askham explained how to translate RGB (Red Green Blue) into CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black White) colours. Here's a picture of his drawing. Apparently I'm not allowed to repeat the story about the rabbits - so you have to work it out for yourself!



Here's the html codes for the CMYK colours:
Cyan = 00FFFF
Magenta = FF00FF
Yellow = FFFF00
Black = 000000
White = FFFFFF

Html Patchworking at Interactive Screen

After a short presentation about Open Source Embroidery, a group of people participating in Interactive Screen got down to some serious freestyle embroidery: in the lounge, in the bar, in the conference room, on the lawn, and in bedrooms. There are about 20 completed patches, and another 10 in progress.






There are some rich personal stories emerging from the patches - see 999933 and 330033. Thanks to the Interactive Screen patchworkers: Genevieve, Sophie, Cam, Stuart, Damien, Julian, Shelia, Aleesa, Celine, Hoda, Keith, Brian, Caitlin, Emilie, Melissa, Diana, Sarain, Susan, JB, Cherry, Kerry, Kim, Patrick, David, Wednesday.

Patchwork preparation in Banff

Lindsay and I raided the scraps boxes in the costume department and found about 25 new colours. I then had to code each fabric, iron it, and edit out the duplicate colours. Ruth and Marc popped round to my room for a cup of tea, and Ruth made a start on the Furtherfield patch.




Interactive Screen is a really intensive conference and workshop programme, and we're all exhausted from absorbing so much information. I think patchworking will be a welcome tangible project.

Revolutionary Knitting Circle

Alberta has its own 'Revolutionary Knitting Circle' based in Calgary. The group has a great manifesto outlining its political commitment:
"We hold that all communities should have the means necessary to meet every essential need of their own people. To that end, the Revolutionary Knitting Circle calls upon people everywhere to take up the struggle through the tools of local production. We shall bring forth not only our voices raised for global justice, but we shall rise together, with the tools to liberate local communities from the shackles of global corporatism."

Have a look at their site http://knitting.activist.ca
Do you think they are instrumentalising knitting for political ends? Or is there really a sustainable alternative economy at work?

User Friendly is not enough!

Tomorrow morning I'm going to the Banff Centre in Canada to help run an event called 'Interactive Screen: User Friendly is not Enough!' Among other things, I'll be facilitating an Html Patchworkshop for up to 50 people. I've got 18 patches with me, and hope to find some more fabric in the Banff Centre costume department...

I agree that being 'user friendly is not enough' but what more is required? Who defines content, and who owns it? In short - how can participation lead to collaboration? All questions I am trying to explore through the Open Source Embroidery project.

Radical Cross Stitch and Normal Flora

Check out the Radical Cross Stitch website - I've added the link in the right hand column. I hope we'll soon be having patches from Australia... I met Rayner through the Open Source Embroidery Group on Facebook. The group now has 34 members including Anna Dumitriu who writes:

"Very interesting work, like it very much. Myself I previously been weaving 16 bit binary code on a self constructed card loom which is linked to similar themes. I currently work with microbiological forms and often use embroidery and am artist in residence at The Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at Sussex Uni.."

Anna's website Normal Flora, and her residency blog are listed in the links on the right.

Access Space patchworkers

Here is everyone at Access Space busy working on their patches on Saturday 28th July. Clare Ruddock came down from Newcastle for the day. She brought the patches made at the DAAMN residency at Glue Gallery, and added them to the design wall. It's looking good!

Open Source Purple Beer!

The Html Patchwork Wiki is up and running, and people are starting to add their stories about their patch. Check out #660066 for musings on the relationship between the colour purple, beer and open source. Html Patchwiki

New Patches

Here's Harriet and Jim making their patches at Access Space in Sheffield. The website is now up and running. So you can check out who's doing which patch and add your own details: Open Source Embroidery