Teabag strings update

I've been blown away by the response from tea drinkers to my tea bag string collection. Here it is so far! I haven't counted yet but definitely have enough to start experimenting with some ideas. Thank you so much, everybody! Now I've just gotta find some really thin needles and get started.

If you have been collecting tea bag strings and want to continue, that is fine because I think I will need more, but if it's all getting a bit much you can probably give it a break cos it's probably going to take me a while to progress through the experimental phase.

You may have noticed from the picture that many people have been leaving the tags on their strings. Initially I didn't think I wanted this but now I think that's great. I never realised there were so many different brands of tea out there so I'm gonna make some use of the tags too- maybe around a frame or just a mosaic type of thing.

Knit Knit book review and tea bag strings

During the Easter long weekend I visited my brother in Melbourne. Melbourne is one of my favourite cities and the year I spent living there in 1999 was far too short. But one way or another my life hasn't taken me back there to live (yet), so I'm super happy to have a close relo living there now. Aside from visiting my brother and yarn shops (of course) my main aim was to visit bookshops. I borrowed a bike from my brother and rode around town from shop to shop and didn't have a lot of luck finding anything I liked until the last day when I hit paydirt at Borders in Carlton. It has a great selection of knitting books (unlike Borders in the Canberra Centre which continually disappoints). My best get was Knit Knit, edited by Sabrina Gschwandmer. (BTW, thank you, God, for giving me a short German surname to spell.) This book is full of the most inventive stitching. It's mostly wearable and non-wearable knitted art and profiles 27 knitters/artists. My favourite is Isabel Berglund who has knitted a wearable room! The knitted walls have knitted garments sewn into them which you can slip into and the whole thing is topped off with a knitted tree. Absolute genius, as far as I am concerned.

This book has convinced me that nothing is too weird to knit - there's even a section on a guy called Dave Cole who knits gigantic structures (e.g. a massive teddy bear) out of sometimes toxic industrial materials. So I've decided to collect 1000 used tea bag strings to knit. The pic is of my current collection of two from home. It will be a art/craft/recycling statement type of project. If you would like to help, send me a comment and I'll give you an address to which you can send your used tea-bag strings. I've already caused a stir at work by putting a bowl with a sign in the kitchen. Hmm...cup of tea...good idea!