SpaceMika

Deadliest Catch

I’ve been looking for an excuse to post this photo, and now the latest issue of Knitty featuring a small stuffed crab is adding to the crab-frenzy. I might need to make a buddy for my tiny octopus.

I think I’ve picked up a cephalopod obsession from my cousins, amplified by the delightful “octopus disguised as coconut” and octopus disguised as algae” clips. Thus, it follows that fell in love with Hansi Singh‘s knit octopus pattern from the moment I first laid eyes on it, and had to knit one of my own.

I, of course, didn’t bother with the gauge, half the instructions, or the eyeballs. I suspect my octopus has aspirations of evolving into a brain slug.

I knit up a fish hat while on a coastal geomorphology field trip.

Then I got people to try it on. Bwahahahaha!

I picked up possum-yarn when I was in New Zealand, but didn’t get around to knitting it until recently. I agree with the knitty review to some extent. I didn’t find it split at all, but that might be the amazing (also NZ) Quill-brand needles. It tears incredibly easily if you give it a yank, but doesn’t break while knitting.

I am finding the possum a bit itchier than I’d anticipated (again, departing from the knitty review). All the advertising calls it ecologically responsible fur because in New Zealand, possums are a pest killing all the endangered flightless birds, but at the same time I can’t quite wrap my heart around moral-fur, so that also rubs me a little wrong about the yarn.

The gloves are a simple-knit, just a ribbed tube with a thumb stuck on, but are very warm and comfy. Pattern: co 30 on six 6 needles, k2p2 rib for a while, k2tg x2, knit flat for a few rows, mk2, rejoin in circle, knit a bit more, cast off. Pick up stitches along the thumb hole, kit in a rib in the round for a while, cast off. Done!

The hat is equally simple — co 120 in one colour, knit next row in main colour, k10, p2, k6, p2 rib, decrease by a bit each row (I did k2tog & decs on either side of the k10 blocks until they were down to k4, and on the k6 blocks until they were down to k2), then keep pattern for a while. Alternate colours by 1 row, main colour for 1 row, 5 rows, main colour for 1 row, 1 row, return to main colour and continue on. To decrease at the top, I did some k2togs & decs until all stiches were knits, then k2togs until only 5 stitches remained, cast off, and wove the end in.

The scarf is the only item without any of the possum-wool. I photographed it before, here

Making Mathematics with Needlework is a book that uses knitting to illustrate mathematical principals. I haven’t gotten my paws on it yet, but you know I want to.

In other news, my knitting designer of choice continues to be Mari Muinonen. Literally the only patterns I have ever purchased have been hers; such neat designs! (aka, “She’s come out with some new patterns, and I want to dive in with both needles and a pile of yarn!”)

Remember my thesis sweater? I still love it.

I haven’t had much need for it in the heat of Oz, but it served me well in my sojourn in southern Tasmania. The hat is from my flight.

I’m highly fidgety, especially in the Vancouver winter when the gray skies and constant rain discourage going outdoors to play. To keep from going crazy, I knit. I knit a lot. I knit when walking to work, when watching movies, while watching my models run, while having intense intellectual discussions at dinner, I knit pretty much all waking hours. When I don’t have something to knit, I lose hours to browsing for yarns, patterns, and ideas for the next project. To avoid this during my thesis-crunch, I decided to cast on my second sweater, this time using a pattern that looked demanding. In theory, the timing worked nearly perfectly — the sweater pattern was selected in the summer, the yarn didn’t get purchased until the fall, and I just cast off this past week. Of course now I’m in thesis-crunch and don’t have a significant project, so I’ve had to go yarn-shopping multiple times in the past week. Still, I am in love with the sweater:

Variation of Green Gable Hoodie

There were (of course!) several modifications from the pattern.

• replace horrid Lion’s Bulky with two thinner yarns (including a hand-dye laceweight misty alpaca — beautiful!)
• thicken back cables to 3×2 instead of 2×2
• remove hood (may continue to modify neckline with later revisions)
• lengthen sleeves so they sit below the thumb instead of at the wrist
• lengthen body so it sits by the hips instead of at the waist

I also entered into some sort of strange violate-physics alternate knitting dimension and used far, far, far less yarn than calculated. I actually have enough yarn pare to knit an entire extra sweater. Yeah, crazy!

By the way, Stacks… knitting scarfs is dull. Try slippers or fingerless gloves or event a hat on a set of circular needles with a fairly bulky yarn. Knitting is far more rewarding when you actually get a finished project in a reasonable amount of time! Even with a pair of sweaters and countless accessories, I still dread the scarf-knit. It just takes so long!

A friend recently wrote to me, “Having ‘knit’ and ‘landslide’ as your two largest tags and right next to each other makes me think you should knit a model of a landslide sometime.” Although I completely agree with her (and have idly daydreamed of knitting a scarf embedded with recommended rheologies & parameters for different types of events once my thesis is written), in the next few days I suspect the “landslide” tag is going to expand to a level all of its own.

Why? I’m writing up all my landslide descriptions just as fast as my little fingers can type. The main list on the Thesis page is being updated as I go, but for the next few days your RSS feed will be downright clogged with every case description I can manage. Shortly after this binge will be a silent, secondary binge as I go back through all those descriptions and add on the “results” paragraph outlining the model that provided best-fit results. And after that? Figures, of course! And updating the references to tie into my fantastic RefWords database so it’s all formatted for easy conversion into the desired thesis format.

Greg, in his newly-knitted hat.

The hat is a flat-variation of Swell from Knitty in 100% wool. The hat took three days to make, and I liked it so much that I’ve bought some yarn to make a more colourful variation for myself.

The hat is inspired by the Knitty pattern Swell modified to have a straight rib brim (6 rows) instead of earflaps.

My excessive knitting can be taken as either procrastination or a sign that I’m working really, really hard. Either way, there are lots of tasty hats!

This is a detail-photo of Greg

This hat was knit up on 4.5mm (US size 7) circular needles with three balls of the Eskimo wool (I have half a ball of each colour left over). The variation to make it flat with a ribbed brim instead of ear-flapped is:
Cast on 77 [88, 99] stitches
Knit one row
*K2, P2* , repeat to end of row for 4 rows
Knit one row
then continue with the regular pattern starting with the 2nd line of directions in “Hat” (ie, ” K 12 rounds.”)

…can you tell I love this hat? Mine is going to have one colour for the brim, and try to fit in a full three bands of waves instead of two, all in different colours.

Gran in Magic

This hat is inspired by the yip-yip martians from the Muppets and is a variation of that Furry Fury hat I’d made before. Once I watched the skit, I just knew I had to knit one up for Magic. Later my gran saw it, and decided she liked it far better than the 100% cotton lavender cap I’d knit for her.

In the words of cousin Sarah, she’s a druid! Or maybe a fuzzy blue marshmallow!