Firefly Swap: Final Report, Part 1

The Firefly swap is over! This is very exciting, because it means that I can start blogging about my knitting again. Of course, I haven't actually started knitting anything since the end of the Firefly swap, so I have nothing to blog about. But as soon as I come up with something, I will post about it here.

But right now, it is time for the Firefly swap report. I've got two things to report on: what I gave and what I got. What I got is beyond amazing, but I think I'm going to save that for tomorrow, because I'm tired and slightly incoherent. So for now, I will just post a picture of my Blue Sun Mittens:


I basically borrowed the design for this from the Maude Mittens that I knit a few months back. I didn't get gauge with this yarn, though, so I adjusted the size a bit for my actual gauge. The Blue Sun logo bit is my own design, obviously, and I changed the palm motif a little bit, just because I felt like it.

Here's a closeup of the palm:


And here's a closeup of the back:


Real Firefly fanatics may recognize that the logo isn't exactly right. The real Blue Sun logo features a half-circle, not a full one. It looks like this:



The logo is a little too short and squat to fit well on a mitten, though, so I added a top to the globe in order to make it longer and more hand-shaped. If I made a pair for myself, with my exceptionally short, squat hands, I'd take off the top and use the original logo.

I've got the chart on an Excel file, by the way, if anyone would like to use it. Just leave me a comment and I'll email it to you.

Geekcraft Explosion!

I suspect this will be the last time that Entertainment Weekly blog will scoop me on a Joss-Whedon-related crafting story. Here is a story about CrochetMe's attempt to get an interview with Joss Whedon. I think I might actually be indirectly responsible for this very cool campaign, because I posted on Ravelry about the "Crocheting Monthly" reference in the interview Joss did with Wired. For all I know, though, people had been talking about it on Craftster for days before I noticed it. But I like to think it was all me. Anyway, if anyone reading this has done Whedon-related projects, get thee over to CrochetMe and post a picture. They're hoping that Joss will be so overwhelmed by all the examples of Whedony crafting that he will feel obligated to give an interview.

Can I just say that it's a little odd that the mainstream media has apparently picked up my totally geeky sci-fi crafting obsession?

Moritorium on Geek Knitting

I did another Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. I know that those of you in other cities are thinking "Isn't Can't Stop the Serenity over?", but ours was postponed, so it's not. Anyway, I'm not crazy about the hat. I got gauge exactly, so I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it fits weirdly. Here's a picture of the hat:



And here's a goofy picture of me in it:



The geek knitting has gotten a little out of control, so I am now switching to projects that have no Firefly tie-in. I've got my mom's socks on hold for a little while. I realized that I messed up the stitch pattern, and I'm taking a break while I get over my frustration with that. In the meantime, I am knitting this summer hat for a fellow Raveler who is going through chemo and has solicited hat donations. For the hat, I'm using some of the GGH Samoa that I purchased for my very first failed project, a baby blanket that I planned to knit to celebrate the birth of my now two-year-old nephew. I don't have any regrets about the now-abortive baby blanket: it was actually a really good way to practice beginning knitting. But I'm clearly never going to finish it, and the yarn is perfect for chemo caps. I'm also test knitting some stranded mittens for another Raveler, which I am very, very excited about. I think I'm going to cast them on when I finish the hat.

Futher Adventures in Geekery and Intarsia

You know how sometimes your knitting seems to have a mind of its own? Today my Browncoat Bag woke up and informed me that it was meant to be a Browncoat Laptop Sleeve. Far be it from me to deny an innocent piece of fabric the opportunity to pursue its destiny, so it now is a laptop sleeve.

It's kind of a mess. I'm not sure how much of that is my knitting and how much of it is the crappy yarn. At any rate, I will try intarsia again at some point, but I think I'm going to give it a rest for a while, so I can forget how annoying I found it. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment anyway. I have to finish my mom's socks in the next week, and then I'm test knitting a mitten pattern for a fellow Raveller. I also have to finish my big-person Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. So it's not like I'm going to be tempted to make a second pass at intarsia anytime soon.

I have done the impossible, and that makes me mighty

Yeah, ok, maybe not the impossible. More like the slightly challenging, given my current level of knitting prowess. And maybe I'm not so much mighty as a slightly more experienced knitter than I was a week ago. But I appear to have tackled intarsia. My intarsia experiment was not entirely successful, but given what a chore intarsia has turned out to be, I'm still rather impressed with myself. Here is the browncoat patch panel for a bag that I plan to make:


That looks slightly lumpier than it actually is, because I haven't woven in the ends yet, so it's pinned down on top of all the random strands of yarn. I think it'll look a bit better when it's done.

The pattern, for those who are not quite as obsessively geeky as me, is the patch that's on Mal's uniform in the flashback sequence in the pilot episode of Firefly. I am not quite geeky enough to have found that motif myself: you can buy patches or various things with the patch on them from purveyors of geeky goods. I made this for the Can't Stop the Serenity auction, but I think it's actually probably not good enough to auction off. I'll see when the thing is done, which should be soon. I still have to weave in all the ends, which is going to take approximately as long as it did to knit the thing. After that, I need to connect the front and back panels, knit some straps, and do a lining. I probably won't do the lining unless I'm happy enough with it to think that someone might actually use it.

I knew that a lot of people hated intarsia, but for some reason I got it into my head that their objections were aesthetic. They associated intarsia with hideous Christmas sweaters and clothing with pictures of cloyingly adorable puppies. It didn't occur to me that the issue with intarsia might be that it's actually an enormous pain in the ass. I was deeply surprised by what a pain in the ass it was, because I like stranded knitting, and that seems like it should be harder. But even on DPNs, stranded colorwork is a lot less irritating than intarsia, as far as I'm concerned. I have a feeling that there are a couple of intarsia tricks that one has to figure out for oneself, and then it becomes a little less irksome. For instance, I think that I should keep all the strands of yarn pretty short and just not worry about having to add new yarn fairly frequently. It's less of a pain to weave in a few extra ends than to untangle a really long strand of yarn. But I didn't figure that out until near the end, and I swear that I spent as much time untwisting strands of yarn as I did knitting.

Here, by the way, is the chart that I used, tweaked slightly from the one that I posted way back in February. I'm still not totally happy with it.

Whatever happened to Baby Jayne?

It's done, that's what. I finished my Baby Jayne hat in record time. Here it is.


I apologize for modeling that on a turquoise balloon. I thought about knocking on my next door neighbors' door and asking if I could borrow their baby, but I decided that would be weird.

I made this to be auctioned off at the silent auction attached to the Chicago screening of Can't Stop the Serenity, a geektastic fan event for Firefly fans. The Chicago CStS organizer is also a knitter, so I figure they'll be set for grown-up Jayne hats, and maybe it would be good for me to do something different. My baby Jayne hat was also, however, part of the extended gauge-fixing project. This was my first real project with my new, reasonably tight gauge. I knit this on size 8 needles and got four stitches to the inch. Go me! I think I am officially declaring my gauge successfully altered.

I'm kicking around the idea of knitting something else for CStS. Maybe I'll do a scarf with that browncoat emblem I charted lo these many months ago. In the meantime, I've got to say that I really enjoyed knitting this baby hat. I think I need to do more small, easy projects. Finishing things is good for the soul.

Aaarggh

I have a serious, serious gauge issue. I cannot ever get gauge. I must be a sloppy swatcher or something.

I just washed and dried the back of my Green Tea Raglan, and my gauge is totally off. I'm getting 26 rows per 4 inches, instead of the required 28, and that's having gone down two needle sizes from what's suggested. I think I'm going to have to frog the whole thing, because it's definitely going to be too big, and I think this pattern will just look sloppy unless it's pretty form-fitting. It's sad, too, because all that seed stitch looks so pretty.

I'm off to swatch on size 4 needles. Aaargggh!

In the meantime, I think I'm going to knit a baby Jayne hat to be auctioned off at Can't Stop the Serenity. I figure everyone else will be making grown-up Jayne hats, and maybe there will be a market for the tiny ones for tiny, newborn Browncoats. Also, I think I need to knit something really quick and easy to overcome my frustration at screwing up my second sweater.

Futher Adventures in Geekcraft

I'm still working on my Central Park Hoodie. I'm about halfway done with the sleeves, and I hope to finish them up tonight. After that, all that's left is the hood and the button band. I think I might be able to finish this thing in the next week or so, which is very exciting. Almost as exciting is the fact that I get to choose a new project. And because I am a lazy geek, I plan to do something both easy and geeky. I am going to make a bag that looks like a Jayne hat.

What is a Jayne hat?, you ask. And here is where the geekitude commences. Jayne Cobb, who despite his name is a guy, is a character on the short-lived, geektastic sci-fi T.V. show Firefly. On a ship full of people with rather lofty motivations, Jayne is an uncomplicted mercenary. He's big and kind of dumb, and he pretty much just cares about money, sex and guns. He's also very funny, and a lot of fans love him, even though he's a big, dumb bully. Anyway, in one of the final episodes of the show, Jayne's mother sends him a spectacularly hideous hand-knit hat. It's about the ugliest hat in the history of ugliness, but Jayne is a big lug who loves his mama, so he has no idea that his new hat is ugly. Here is a picture of Jayne in his hideous hat.



So anyway, because Firefly fans are geeks, they have, of course, taken to knitting their very own hideous Jayne hats. And because I am a geek and want to knit something easy, I thought about knitting a Jayne hat for my next project. But there's a hitch. This has been the snowiest winter in Chicago in recent memory. It's snowed all the damn time. It is now March, and it's still snowing. No really: it's snowing as I type this. And I cannot stand the thought of knitting a hat. It is time for hat season to be over. I want to knit things that can be worn when it's warm out.

So I'm thinking that I'm going to make a bag based on a Jayne hat. It'll be like an upside down Jayne hat, with the ear flaps comprising the shoulder strap. I plan to modify this pattern from Knitty. And here is the extremely cheap acrylic yarn that I purchased today to make my big damn bag:



I'm 100% positive that it will be hideous, but here's hoping it will be hideous in the right way.

Cross-stitching for the revolution!

On the Ravelry thread about the Browncoat patch chart, someone linked to KnitPro, which will convert images from your hard drive into knitting or cross-stitch patterns. This is part of some sort of lefty project, the purpose of which is not entirely clear to me. (I'm pretty lefty, but I craft because I like crafting, not because I believe my Central Park Hoodie will singlehandedly end capitalism and smash the patriarchy.) I ran the Browncoat patch through it and came up with this:



It would take some work to convert that to an actual chart, since you'd have to figure out what to do with the gray squares, and I'm not sure that I would like it as much as mine in the end. The skinny star is more like the one on the original patch than my pudgy star, but when you actually chart it out, I think it looks a little choppy and un-star-like. Anyway, it's a cool tool, and I'm putting it here for my friend M, who is a cross-stitching maven and who might want to use it to make her own cross-stitch patterns. Hopefully, they will be suitably revolutionary, or at least cute and nerdy.

(M once did an elaborate and deeply awesome Star Wars cross-stitch for her admirably geeky boyfriend. Someone should start a website in which to display excellent instances of geek craft.)

And again with the geekiness

I tweaked the Excel formating to make the stitches on my Browncoat insignia stitch shaped, not square. The cool-looking chopped-off triangle no longer looks cool like this, but I think the triangle patch looks ok. Here it is. Once again, feel free to tweak, and let me know if you'd like me to email you the Excel file for easier tweakage. Here's what I've got:



Ok, here's a final effort to fix the star:

No, really. I wasn't kidding about the fangirl thing.

Someone on Ravelry wanted a chart for a Browncoat insignia, so I have attempted to chart a Browncoat insignia. It looks a little bit like Jayne's mom was commissioned to do Browncoat uniforms, but I suppose that adds to the gritty authenticity. At any rate, you've got to give me credit for being geeky. Unfortunately, I have no idea how one would actually go about knitting this thing. I've never done intarsia, and that's probably the way to go. (I don't know if the gauge is right for intarsia, though. I do stranded colorwork, and I used square graph paper, because that's how my stranded stitches work out.) This would take considerable tweaking if you wanted to make it into a stranded pattern, because there are big, uninterrupted blocks of single colors. I bet someone could come up with something cool, though. At any rate, feel free to tweak it as you see fit. Also, it's an Excel file, and I'd be happy to send it to you if you'd like to fool around with it for yourself.

So anyway, here is what the Browncoat insignia is supposed to look like:

And here is my best effort:

Edited to add this one, which is not strictly accurate but which I think looks kind of cool: