How I out Hermione'd Hermione.

Yesterday I had a fabby day at Uni.

It started in a mild panic. I'd got into the studio at 8.30 only to have to turn around and run home because I'd forgotten my photographs that I needed for my project review later in the day. Stupidly they were still in my printer tray, inches away from where I'd picked up something else that morning. Amazingly my eyes must have slipped past them. Anyway, I picked them up and ran back to Uni in time to make it to my 9.15 appointment I have on a Thursday. An hour and a bit later I went back to the studio to find out which review group I was in and what time we were meeting. Oh joy! It wasn't until 1.30 so I had so time to get me stuff together.

So at 1.30, 5 of my course mates and I sat down around the table and did our show-and-tell.
The first girl went up and hadn't produced a mood board which was a requirement for the meeting. Fee told her in no uncertain terms that if she was a designer, she'd be sacked. That simple. I immediately planned. I hadn't got a mood board either but there was a good reason.

They went round the rest of the group and then it was my turn. Why is it I always seem to be last? School sports teams have left their mark. So, I sat there and faced Fee.
"OK I don't have a mood board because when I started to research this, it seemed to head in lots of directions and I didn't want to overcrowd it so I wanted to ask for some guidance".

"That's a mature answer" responded Fee and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I started by telling them my quote and then how I brain stormed. "It immediately fired ideas of breaking rules and anarchy. I felt that traffic signs represented this really well so I started by taking photos of signs". Showed the photos."Then I noticed some graffiti which of course is breaking the rules but also a way of writing" more photos and photocopied images. "I really like the line quality of this particular graffiti piece" nods of approval and a small discussion on types of graffit. "At the same time I was considering writing and wanted to explore types of writing - alphabets, runes, pictograms, that kind of thing, so I went off to the British Museum yesterday and had a look at the Asia and Islamic section". More nods and smiles from tutors. "I really like this image you've photocopied from a book" said DT, holding up a a large, single word in Arabic. "Yeah I did too. In fact that made me think of fractals so I've been looking at those too which fits nicely with the quote because fractals occur at the point where order and chaos meet". At this point I'm trying to ignore the whispers that were travelling around the table. Fee and DT both understood my mood board dilemma but the DT told me that the amount of work I generated meant that I could produce 3 - 1 for each aspect. "Oh! Can I do that?" Apparently this is a rule you're allowed to break!.

But wait because I've saved the best till last. We talked about fractals and patterns and I mentioned that I was intrigued at what would happen if you broke up a pattern. "I'm knitting this lace scarf for a friend for Yule, so I copied the pattern, cut up the individual lines and then pulled them at random and knitted them.". Fee takes my research book where my piece of knitting has been attached and starts to examine it. "So where did this come from?" she enquired. "The pattern. These are the rows and then I recorded the order in which I knitted them". Fee looked at me with a look mixed with shock, awe, disbelief and excitement. "So did you knit this?" she enquired. "Yeah" I replied matter of factly. At this point the whispering started again. "That's kind of as far as I got". We then spent a good 5 - 10 minutes talking about chaos and the ideas I'd generated.

The group broke up with ideas of how to develope our individual projects. And I went for a smoke. It's Thursday, I'm allowed. One of the others came out and joined me. "Oh my God how much work have you done?!" at this point I felt uncomfortable. I work hard but really don't like to draw attention to it. It's just how I work. It's not special or weird. It just is. "I just researched my quote. We've had 3 days so it's a reasonable amount of work for that length of time. Plus I don't have TV so I need to do something of an evening". Kel looked at me with some understanding and less fear. "Plus you can knit. Fee loved that. She thinks you're great". Again with the discomfort. "erm .... I'm not sure that's true but cheers". Then Fee came out and joined us. She was really excited about that fact that I knit and we talked some more about disrupting patterns.

I went home last night on a little cloud of happiness. I'm so glad that knitting was my first rotation.

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