strongman

Alright, more Montreal love today. I'm working on all sorts of little projects these days, but I'm having trouble getting things done, or at least done and photographed so that I can show them to you. So instead, I'm going to show you something I finished a long time ago. Well, not a long time, but at least four months ago, and when I still lived in La Belle Province, so it feels like a long time ago.  Montreal has a lot of great public art, of both the old-school and contemporary variety, but this is one of my favourite traditional bronze figurative dealies. It is a statue of Louis Cyr, a famous turn of the century strong-man, know as "L'homme plus fort du monde" as it says on his statue (though I may well have spelled that incorrectly. My French is better spoken than written) I've been doing an intermittent, though on-going project in which I knit clothing or other adornments for sculptures. I knew it was only a matter of time till I knit something for Louis.

Et voila! Barbell ball covers. 

These were knitted out of the yarn from two second-hand sweaters that I unraveled and reclaimed. If you are interested in working with reclaimed yarn, (very environmentally friendly, and also cheap) there is are great tutorials here and here. 

It took me a bit of trial and error to work out how to do this in a way that I liked the look of. I thought about doing short row shaping, but didn't like the way that looked in the end, and finally decided on straight up evenly spaced decreases, which give that nice swirly star look on the top.  Since the dumbells are attached in the middle, I had to leave an opening in the bottom half of each ball, so that I could get the covers on, and then sewed them up by hand. 
I was very happy with how these turned out in the end. And I remember this day so well. It was really hot, and I walked over to where the statue was with my friend Sarah C. who took the pictures, and I used a dirty old gallon bucket as a step ladder to get up on the statue's base in order to sew the covers on. It was the day before the Baby's birthday, and I remember marveling at how he'd been with us for a whole year! It was also the day before we left Montreal, and this was the last piece of art that I made there. It felt like a nice way to say good-bye, and at the same time leave a little bit of me there. I knew it would not be there forever, but I was very pleased to hear from friends that it was stayed up there on the statue for almost a month. That made me very happy. It also made me think that the Parks Maintenance workers in Montreal are not very observant. Or maybe not. Maybe they are just big art fans. Here's hoping. 

Comments

[brooklyn codger]

Wowsers!

[Rebekah]

very cool!

[The Bombshell]

This is awesome!

[Marieke Berga]

These covers are too lovely. I love the pattern and the colour!!! If only my body was shaped like a barbell, I would love to wear them!