Bridge art and the phoenix

There's not been that much knitting going on here, and this post is a bit random. First, photos of Mill Road Bridge in Cambridge, which has been repainted thanks to the Castle Project (which helps vulnerable 16-25 year olds with housing and work) and the Cambridge Youth Forum. I cycle over this twice a day and until now it's rained every single time since they repainted. Today it didn't, so this is the north side

and this the south side looking towards the station.

It's just tremendously cheering. So far it's stayed untouched by the attention of vandals or anti-war protestors, unlike most public spaces that size along the road.

The main reason I'm distracted and seriously sleep-deprived (and not knitting) is due entirely to my own almost zen mastery of the art of procrastination. Until Sunday night, this was what I had for exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching Shows (Birmingham and Harrogate iterations)

which would be fine if it didn't have to be a piece 9" by 12" by 18" consisting mainly of stitching by hand or machine using one of those needles with a hole in one end. However. This is the nest for my Phoenix piece, knitted out of fine strips of carrier bags and parcel ribbon and melted round a Pyrex bowl using a heat-gun. I spent 20 hours on Monday working on the rest of the piece (culminating in a particularly poignant moment at 3:15 on Tuesday morning when my machining on water-soluble fabric did the inevitable and completely dissolved on contact with water.... I went to bed; I got up 2 hours and 45 minutes later and embarked on a replacement) and eventually, 6 minutes before my lift to the selection meeting arrived, it was finished. So, it is done, and I did it. Still have the sketchbook to finish and post to the group leader...

I can't show you the finished piece. I'd like to say this is because it's confidential until the shows, but that would imply that anyone who cares was reading this, or because I'd rather leave it until it's sitting on its rather beautiful display thingy; and there are good reasons why both of those are true; but actually, I didn't remember to take a picture before it was transported off to be seen again at the NEC in a week or so's time.

And one final random thing. I distinctly heard Jennifer say "Mrs DeSouza came out one day and found a Gloucester Old Spot nibbling on her sarong" in The Archers this evening; am hoping this was some form of exhaustion-induced auditory hallucination...