I have an ending!

 I like the idea of an interactive book in which the reader can sew in the threads of the story but it really needs an end and especially if its going to be used by children, I can’t just kill off my knitter. 

Lots of the people I talked to about the project asked if I’d knocked on the door and asked the knitter (I hadn’t) but what if I did? What would I find? If they’d knitted up the hedge around them it wouldn’t surprise me if they ran out of wool, so I could take them some more. It’s simple, but it addresses all my concerns about isolation and community. The knitter has a lifeline and I have a shape for Kurt Vonnnegut’s diagram.

So I did some doodles of what might happen.

I’m channelling Lucy Sparrow a bit with her Felt Cornershop , but I’m also thinking about the people who knit/crochet the post box toppers  and this knitted kitchen project I’m surprised that no one (me included!) came up with yarn bombing as a possible reason for the wool.

There isn’t time to fully work through this but here are some slightly more resolved sketches to show how it might look

I had to see how it might work as a book. 

This cover is made using sewing thread to attach the multicoloured embroidery thread to a piece of cartridge paper. I haven’t got all the right coloured sewing threads but I like the effect.

This is the body of the concertina book.

I don’t think that the idea of getting the viewer to add their own thread to the story would work because it is so complicated, maybe a simpler version where they add the highlights could work? The holes would need to be numbered and the thread cut to shorter lengths to make it easier to handle. Possibly a length of green thread attached to the page where the hedge grows up could let the reader grow their own hedge.

The lines don’t look very much like wool so I created a digitally collaged version for my videos using photos of various cardigans:

\and this is the final page accessed by turning over the last concertina page.

I think this page needs some writing but I haven’t decided between “I had to find out” and “ I knocked on the door”  (or maybe I’ll think of something better)