I Heard You Fell Into a Rabbit Hole

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

- Lewis Carroll

Finally went to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and bar the 3D and the subsequent commentary made by certain members of my family about their dislike of it...I really enjoyed it.

The basic premise, of retelling the original story as though Alice has unwittingly returned to Wonderland ('Underland'), seemed a tad redundant, why not just tell the original story? Personally this didn't bother me, I went into the cinema looking forward to the traditional Tim Burton explosion of colourful madness and wasn't disappointed.I admit, they could have gone a little madder, been a little more extreme given they weren't following the story to the letter, but it's a Disney film and you expect a certain level of sanity, especially for a PG.

It was beautifully done though and the costumes were amazing. Some of the 'makeshift' dresses which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) wears were incredibly and Mad Hatter's (Johnny Depp) costumes were perfectly insane to depict a possible madness alluding to mercury poisoning used in the felting process by milliners. Whenever I watch films like this, with elaborate costume it makes part of me wish I'd gone to do costume design at Edinburgh instead of Jewellery at Dundee. I'd been so textiles based right up until we got a talk about jewellery and I couldn't image being part of any other department. Sad but true. Speaking of which, maybe this is the perfect time to start looking at doing some Alice based designs, as well as adding in more textiles to my work. I'm lusting over madly dyed wool tops for felting...perhaps I'll go mad as a hatter while working with it.

We also did an Alice based window for work based more on the Disney cartoon Alice than Burton or Tenniel illustrations - though given Burton's focus on the poem Jabberwocky, we were actually more on theme than I first thought. It leads on from our Floral Pom-pom window in February, the poms popped up to reveal knitted momeraths with glasses on and Alice chasing the white rabbit through Tulgey Wood, trying not to step on them.

My clever little sister did all the cut outs (we reused the cut out trees we slaved over together at Christmas), while mum and I knitted legs and I turned them into momeraths using the pop pom flowers as hair. Then we found sets of Winston's old glasses to put on him. Winston being a teddy bear which used raffle off for charity when we did teddy bear picnic windows and asked patients to loan us their teddies. It was lovely and one day we'll hopefully do it again, if I find a picture I'll post it.

However, for now, I'm going to await seeing the film again when it comes out and try and steal Louise's copy of Alice and finally read it properly before that happens.

..................................................................................

Bright Eyes - Down In A Rabbit Hole