Crocheting Time and Space

Not much to share these days in terms of my own work on account of it being crunch time at school.  One thing I would like to share is this incredible example of conceptual craft dreamt up my internet pal Lana, who hails from Hamburg, Germany.  A brilliant example of time-based crochet, this is what Lana had to say about the project:

I have crocheted this bangle in the subways of Hamburg on November 2nd, 9:00 - 14:00.  I crocheted only while driving in the subway, in the color of the current subway line.  I started at home, because the beginning is complex (you have to sew, which would be difficult in the subway). Then I started with the red line at "Gänsemarkt," and drove to intersections to switch the color/line.

I rode the subway for so long until the bangle was finished.
  Surprisingly, this was exactly at 14:00 on the station "Wandsbeker Chaussee."  The whole experiment lasted 5 hours,
 pure crocheting time was: 3 hours 43 minutes.

The bangle was available in my etsy shop.

Genius!  Imagine what the NYC subway system would look like?  It would probably be the size of a skipping rope...or longer!

Vladimir Nabokov's Alphabet in Colour

I came across this beautiful book yesterday afternoon in a bookshop near my house. It is an illustrated alphabet by Jean Holabird of Vladamir Nabokov's descriptions of the alphabet, inspired (is that the appropriate word?) by his Synesthesia. The text included in the book is quoted from Nabokov's Speak, Memory. The book is a really interesting meditation on the senses and the ways they can intersect with one another.

The following text was scooped from the Alphabet in Colour page on the Gingko Press website:

"For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird’s interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century’s literary greats is a revelation. Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. This book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov’s mind.

In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird’s grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov’s idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape. He saw “q” as browner than “k,” while “s” is not the light blue of “c,” but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. . . . Dull green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for “w.”
In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, “the prince of Nabokovians,” points out that an important part of “Nabokov’s passion for precision was his passion for color.”