Out of Control

Around three years ago I made some twined openwork pieces, inspired by the work of Japanese bamboo artist Morigami Jin. You can read about it here.

After making a few smaller pieces I started on an ambitious larger spiral. And then…I got bored.

The piece has been hanging around in my workroom ever since, leaving me wondering if I would ever finish it.

But in April, Prism Textiles Group, of which I am a member, was offered an exhibition at the Knit and Stitch Show in London (8-11 October 2026) and Harrogate (19-22 November 2026). The Prism Committee decided that the theme would be “Out of the Box”, because all the works would have to be transported to, from, and between the shows in sturdy boxes supplied by Prism.

Those opting for 3D work (including me) were given a box 100x30x30cm for our work. The work did not have to be 100cm high – the box could be cut down so that it was shorter – but the footprint of the piece could be no larger than 30x30cm.

The Second Coming

When I lugged the box into my workroom, I noticed that the spiral was exactly the right size to fit inside the box. It was shorter, but if I worked on it to make it longer (but not wider) it would be perfect – I could kill two birds with one stone.

While I was musing on the idea of spirals, I was reminded of a poem by WB Yeats, called “The Second Coming”. The first verse goes like this:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.”

The words seemed to sum up the state of the world right now. So I thought I would try to express the sentiments of the words in my piece – the idea of anarchy and everything being out of control – by leaving all the ends long and wild.

Then I started thinking about the words “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”. The spiral gets wider towards the top – would it be possible to make it turn as well?

Motor struggles

I ordered a battery-powered motor for rotating a disco ball and tried it out.

As you can see, it was very jerky and slanted at an angle. There were various engineering problems to overcome. First, I had to somehow attach the motor to the piece so that it was balanced. I started by tying a piece of fishing line across the centre of the piece and attaching the motor to that. But it kept sliding from one side to the other.

I wanted the motor to be hidden inside the piece, not sticking up and visible above it, so it was quite fiddly to attach it so far inside. Also, I originally suspended the motor from above on a loop of fishing line, but this twisted around itself as the piece rotated until it got so tight that it untwisted itself, twirling the spiral very fast in the opposite direction!

So I decided that the motor would have to be higher and that I would have to weave a cover to make it less objectionable. I ended up having to reweave the cover twice. The first one was too tight so the motor couldn’t rotate properly. The second one was still a bit tight. When I rewove the cover for the third time I also added more loose ends so that it didn’t look too stark (and phallic) above the spiral.

I also added a solid white bar across the centre of the piece so that the motor had something firmer to attach to.

Finally, it worked!

Now I just need to do a bit of trimming, wrap everything so that it fits inside the box, and write instructions on how to change the battery!