My hanging knitted strawberries

This is a test piece/design idea for a textile show. I am going to make a similar piece out of the large strawberries.
This work will explore themes of and raises questions about sustainability, recycling, consumer issues, branding, and alternatives to mass production of clothing /textiles. My current work shows that anything textile can be made from knitting. It also references the huge world wide craft movement which uses these needle/hook based techniques to make textiles as can be seen in knitting and crochet websites/blogs. the practice of cultural resistance
They are largely women, thus gendering its practice. Knitting has been a very low status craft practice and up until recently…has been largely ignored. It has become 'chic' and 'in vogue'. My current practice is to use both hand spun/hand painted wool from Wales, and recycled fabrics sourced from boot sales, charity shops, Plymouth Scrap Store, my old clothing, friends cast offs. Nothing is bought new apart from the wool. It is very difficult to source purely eco-friendly wool which has little or no carbon footprint. Northern Europeans have used woll for 1000's of years. we know wool production is a sustainable technology. Currently, I am trying to use bigger and bigger gauge needles to produce larger pieces of work. I am going to make my own larger needles from some doweling.