all the wool

all the wool my mother never knitted

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I'm visiting all the places where I have ever lived, making a journey backwards in time. While I am in these places I am knitting all the wool my (late) mother never knitted. The number of hours that I knit in each place corresponds to the number of years that I lived there. The wool maps the journey. Whilst knitting, I record the memories that come back to me connected to that place.

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All the wool my mother never knitted
England
Summer 2009 on

​I began by drawing a timeline to scale that reflects the amount of time I have lived in each place, and setting myself criteria for the process of knitting – how long I knitted for and how many stitches I kept on the needles in each location meant that its shape changed as it ‘mapped’ the journey. Currently 25 metres long, I have shown it as an interactive living art installation both in the town in which I live and in the Bristol Live Platform.
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With much wool still to knit, it will continue to grow as I make other journeys within this open-ended process.

All the wool my mother never knitted - Sedition
Carlisle, England
​September 2010

​Having visited all the places I have lived, the knitting measured approx 25 metres of varying widths representing 63 hours of knitting. During the private view of Sedition, I sat wrapped in the knitting and continued to knit for 2hrs, representing my time living in Carlisle since I began the journey in 2008. Over the 3 month duration of the exhibition, I visited the installation from time to time in order to continue to 'knit myself out of Carlisle', as it were, with an ever-decreasing number of stitches on the needles until only one remained.

All the wool my mother never knitted - Making Time
Lancaster, England
​March 2011

The journey had come to an end, and so to tell its story and have witnesses to the final 'casting off' of the last stitch and finish the knitted 'time-line', I was invited to attend the 'Making Time Symposium'. During a slide show of the knitting in all its locations, I laid out the knitting on the floor of the theatre referring to each corresponding part of the journey as I did so. I then invited the audience to dialogue with me about whether to 'cast off' or not. The reactions varied from encouragement to end it to pleads not to – 'but it's your life!'
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Finally I cut the wool.