There Are Six Year Olds Who Can Draw Better Than You

I'm in an art gallery right now. Like, literally, as I'm writing this. I've gone old fashioned and acquired a notepad and a half chewed Biro (the Biro wasn't half chewed when I bought it, just when I fished it out of the bottom of my hand bag.) I'm meant to be watching a scree, which is showing video clips of Sheffield and the surrounding area, but if I'm honest, it's really just a video of some damp trees. I'm just taking advantage of the bench space. Also, I'm listening to Adele, and she doesn't really fit with pictures of rainy council estates (would it have killed them to do some filming when it was sunny?) 
Since I've sat down, everyone else who was watching the screen has left. I can't tell if this is because the film is really boring  or because I look a bit like a really annoying art student, who may want to engage them in conversation about 'how the piece makes them feel'. The sort that takes black and white photos with cameras bigger than their heads, and sit in coffee shops discussing the methods of oil painting, and how they prefer digital art (ugh.) 
Art students are currently making up a surprisingly small percentage of the people in here. They're probably over the road at the potato print exhibition. This exhibition is full of charcoal sketches of weather, and a large, multi-coloured tent. Most people in here look like rather lost hikers, who have tried going for a walk, and accidently fallen into a painting of the hill they were meant to be up. It's a mixture of them, and middle class mothers, desperately trying to expose their pre-school children to culture. The children couldn't care less. They're more interested in the fact that they can do a little drawing and stick it up on the public display board. So am I. I just did a landscape sketch of Camelot, from Monty Pythons 'Quest For The Holy Grail'.  It was awful. I still stuck it up on the wall. I captioned it 'It is a silly place'. You're welcome.
There are three types of picture up on the wall, each (roughly) as awful as the next. There are the ones done by bored three year olds, who have desperately attempted to do a professionalism water colour of a mountain side, covered in trees. Then, there are the neat little drawings of perfectly shaded fur trees, done by grown up, who were probably just try to show off in front of a date. Finally, there are the worst ones; stick men captioned "By Ben age 17" or "By Clara, aged 17". No. You are not being funny by pretending to do a child's drawing. It's just annoying. And probably quite offensive to the children. Theirs are much better.

The Knitting And Stitching Show

So I decided to go with the textiles department on a school trip to Alexandra Palace on Thursday, to see the the Knitting and Stitching show, as hosted by Twisted Thread. And it was AWESOME.
We had to leave school at stupid o'clock, to get to London by 11am, and then we had four hours to go around the two rooms it was held in, and just look at GOODNESS.
The first room was exhibitions from students and professional artists and knitters, and there were things like knitted dinosaurs.

I know. You're welcome.

There was also actual arty stuff, by far my favorite of which was the 'Jabberwocky' exhibition by Sue Walton and Ann Small, which was honest-to-god incredible. It was like all my favorite things in one 3x6 meter space. Big dresses, bones, dead flowers, and tea pots. What more could a girl ask for? 

There's a bunch of rusty keys in the middle of a bone heart. I'm not sure that 'adorable' is the right word here, but it's the one I'm going to use.

It's in sepia because, hey, turns out that camera phones don't have the best quality.

This. I want it.

See the collar on that dress? Here's a close up:

Again with the camera phone/picture quality thing.

So what you got THERE, is rusty pins (like what would be in a proper Elizabethan collar), and tiny bones, fastened down with string, and red wax. And it's beautiful. 

My favorite actual article of clothing from the exhibition was defo this dress, by Deimante Meilune:

What you see here, is a knitted dress, and a knitted suit. I would probably get married, just for an excuse to wear that dress. Sod it, if I ever got my hands on that, I'd never take it off. I'd go to Tesco's in that. It's made entirely out the finest, knitted lace you could possibly imagine  including the layering at the bottom. Admittedly  there may be some minor problems with the whole holes/see through factors, but I'm pretty sure these can be overlooked. 

All pictures belonging to Ariane Dean, many thanks to Jojo for names, and to Mrs Manvel for sneaking me onto the list.