There is so much thinking to be done at the moment. The Missability Radio Show is getting publicity and I’m reaching out to people all over the web re: this project. I feel like I’m understanding it and making sense of it as I go along… it’s much more scary, putting unfinished ideas out in the world. I can see the appeal of working in solitude, producing an incredibly slick and impressive looking something, depositing it in a white-cube space, exiting the country and then leaving a Gallery to represent the exhibition, really I can. But when it’s me, right there, explaining the work, conversing, developing the idea in public, it also feels more like I am tangibly putting something into the world and making something real and I know I will never be a white cube artist because I love messy reality far too much and I think Art ought to be actually useful.

If all The Missability Radio Show does is get people talking about disability and representation, dignity, personalisation and the design of disability related equipment, then I shall feel the work has been a success. What I took from the college feedback session last time I presented ideas there, was that disability is a contentious, difficult and painful area for many people, and I see it as my creative challenge to find ways of opening up discussions. So far strategies have included:

• using a really colourful, celebratory and empowering visual branding for the project
• opening up the idea of disability related equipment design to the entire knitting community, using the simple entry point of the knitted walking stick cosy competition
• emphasising the need to customise and make personal equipment that is used everyday, rather than criticising manufacturers of equipment
• focusing on product design and recognising that other core aspects of disability-related experience naturally enter into these practical discussions
• using discussion-related mediums – The Radio Talk Show, this blog, the Missability Discussion Forum, post, emails etc. – as the medium for my work

…it will be interesting to evaluate at the end of this project whether any of these strategies have helped or been useful at all.

In the meantime I am learning to write about the project, to talk about the ideas… I’m making it up as I go along based on a large body of thought and knowledge that I’ve been nurturing in my work for many months and it’s exciting and frightening, at once.

The Yarn Crawl yesterday was brilliant; it was great to make contact with so many amazing knitting places!! I love the world of knitting; it is SO vibrant, SO celebratory, SO fun…

Stash was full of beautiful yarn and the owner was happy to put up a poster and some fliers about the Knitting Competition, which I was really thankful for. I got a really amazing skein of something for my third planned walking stick cosy, and was glad to find it had come from a local source!

I knit London was also an excellent place to go; I love their shop so much with all the UK produced yarns and the friendly people who run the place. I have great respect for the way I knit publicised the knit-a-river and enjoyed a good talk with Gerard in the store about how I knit London did that whole campaign. He was super supportive and helpful about the Knitting Competition, and took loads more fliers and posters from me for the store. I picked up some beautiful yarn which feels very papery but is in fact cotton. It is Japanese and when we went to Wagamama’s for our lunch, I was very pleased with the beautiful theming of the moment;

After that we went to The Handweaver’s Studio, which was overwhelmingly amazing with all its fibres and yarns and colours. My Knitting Competition Poster was already up on their wall, which was a heartening sight indeed! It was very hot with all that yarn in the one place and the sunshine pouring in, but the heat didn’t deter Liz for one moment, who was knitting the impressive Print O’ the Wave stole at every possible opportunity.

I got quite a bit further with my polka dot walking stick cosy which is now looking like this;

The highlight of the day was, however, the discovery of this incredible place.

Can such wondrousness really exist? Apparently yes.