My friend, Astrid Furnival, who has died aged 85 after a long illness, was a pioneering textile artist. She eschewed the distinctions between arts and crafts and used words to enhance her imagery. Astrid worked mainly with wool that she spun herself and used dyes that she developed from plants in her garden in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, or in the surrounding fields. She was a hand-knitter who firmly rejected the use of machines, and she utilised the cerebral concerns of concrete and visual poetry – in which the shape or appearance of a poem is related to its message – to produce works that feature the spatial arrangements of words but are also practical objects, such as knitwear and quilts. Continue reading...