Did you go to Stitched Science at the Science Museum in London this weekend? I knitted this natty neuron at a workshop there, and named him Dendy after the dendrites which are the little wiggly bits at the top. (Knit a Neuron have free patterns online so you can knit your own neurons).
After exploring Stitched Science, I pottered around the rest of the museum and stumbled on a facinating exhibition about the history of plastic. The Plasticity exhibition was wrapped in swathes of red plastic strips and encouraged the visitor to look again at the plastic objects we use every day.
A collection of plastic dolls had a label pondering if they have become worthless as most children have a box full and therefore do not value them. “With three Barbies sold every three seconds … Barbie has come to symbolise excess. Barbies are not special, they are disposable.” I wonder if fashion dolls would be more cherished if toy shops returned to selling clothes and accessories for them, rather than just aisles and aisles of new dolls.
Some cute 1930s tablewear on display was made from a type of plastic called urea formaldehyde (in fact the actual display in the museum is pictured on the urea formaldehyde wiki page), which didn’t sound very appealing. Mmm, urea. There’s a nice little marketing lesson there!
The Plasticity exhibition does a very good job of explaining why we love plastic, the impact our love of plastic has on the environment and how we can use and recycle it in the future.
Oh and the highlight of my trip to the Science Museum on Saturday was when a member of staff told me that the loos were “all the way to the end of Space and turn right”.
