Thursday 30 December 2010

Panic Stations!


Well it is a long time since I wrote anything here! The presentation did not go well - mitigating circumstances affected the content and my performance (this included delays in transport) - and I was very disappointed with myself.
I have continued researching but have expanded my research to include acoustics - this will be vital if I wish to seriously consider designing something that will look good and also reduce the amount of noise bouncing around hard walls and floors in restaurants. The books that I am using for research are mainly about the science involved in ‘room acoustics’ so I do not understand the equations, but I am following the basics of the text. The two most promising books that I found in the University library were Room Acoustics, by Heinrich Kuttruff, and Acoustics and Noise Control, by B J Smith, R J Peters and Stephanie Owen.
At the same time I am continuing with my research into the history of applying decorative surfaces to interior walls and alternative methods of applying my designs to surfaces. I am also still working on converting my design into a knitting pattern (and knitting it at the same time), cross-stitching the same design onto ‘aida’ and I have also experimented with 3d applique! I really need to get as much research done as possible, soon, so I can think about how I would design my unobtrusive wall application that is able to absorb sound and write a report of how it all works together.

Submission for this module is 25th January so I am running out of time!

Sunday 5 December 2010

Snowy Week!

Sunday 5th December 2010

Well there hasn’t been a lot of change since I last wrote here, the tutorial session for last Monday was cancelled due to snow, and in fact most of the week was written off due to snow!

I have continued with my research, alternating between the ‘history of applying ornamentation to surfaces’ and ‘alternative methods of applying patterns to surfaces’. At the same time I continue to put spots on to the design and I have also started writing a draft knitting pattern, and knitting it at the same time! This cold spell that we have recently had inspires me to focus on knitting my designs into wall hangings – once I have perfected the pattern I can move on to using chunky wool and massive needles. I feel that it would be possible to design a wallpaper as a background and then knit large hangings that work with the wallpaper design. Obviously, this would be a feature wall design.
 
During the snowy weather I went out to take some photos of how Bedale looked with the application of some snow and ice… some of my photos are really great and would be lovely on Christmas cards… but my main 'inspirations' were to continue with the knitting and also that, snow on the branches and blown against one side of a tree trunk look like a negative photo or reverse shading – I wonder if I could do something with that?









We plan to have a team meeting this week, it is only a week until our initial presentations and we need to discuss how we intend to make our presentations.