jamjar

Because it's been up for a while and I'm just that bad at updating, megolas and I have a shared crafty blog, Spacecrafty. In it you can find various shiney things, as well as notes on knitting.

megolas stayed over for a couple of nights either side of her interviews, which was nice. There were episodes of Firefly, Japanese movies, knitting, trips to Spitalfields and Montezuma chocolate (mmm, chili and ginger), bonding with my chinchilla and too much money spent on shiny things. I take no responsibility for this, although I may have shown her the shop, pointed out various beads and what have you said things like, "oh, that's so pretty, you should definitely get it."

Mostly, I'm happy that I managed to get someone else to watch Warai no Daigakko (Japanese period comedies about the pure love between a writer and his beta-reader a playwrite and the censor), Ima Ai Ni Yukimasu (terribly beautiful film which is sort of a love-story, ghost story, mystery... thing), Shall We ダンス and Swing Girls, making her one of three people in the country to have done so.


Also, my cousin had her baby, who was very sweet and meant we could finally give her the shawl-type thing I'd made for her and the baby-blanket mum and I had knitted together. I also found out that -yay!- her husband will be working on a couple of eps of the Doctor Who finale next year, as well as the bit of Torchwood he's been doing. Oh, if only I belonged to the branch of the family that did interesting things.

So, a little while back, girl_starfish declared that she was, in face, Queen of the Tentacles. This came as a surprise to her friends, although perhaps not as much as it should have been.

I made ( this in response. )

So, having made all of two scarves before hand, I decided to try designing my own. being moderately fannish obsessed, I decided on a Batman Beyond scarf. I wanted to attempt illusion knitting/shadow knitting (when you can only see the patten if you look at it from a specific angle), and the batsymbol seemed a logical choice for this.

This particular WIP has taught me the importance of row counters, and the best way to roll wool up into a ball after you've had to unravel it. Many and varied are the mistakes I made, even after I fugured out how to do the damn thing, which I'll try and sort out when it's done.

I started by tracing the symbol on to actual-size knitting graph paper.
First, I tried the symbol going horizontally along the scarf:
( From above )

( From below )

( Wrong side )

But the symbol didn't really seem big enough, or clear enough, so I unravelled it (both fun and soul-destroying!) and got girl_starfish to draw it vertically on the graph paper, so I could make it twice as big.

( From above )

( From the side )

( From the other side: )

( Wrong side: )

Quick poll, except lj doesn't seem to be letting me make polls right now: Which is best for the rest of the scarf:

Vertical symbol going up the scarf (and facing all the same direction, or alternating?)
Vertical symbol on the ends, smaller horizontal one going along the scarf.
Plain, flat stockinette stripes, with the symbol only done once on each end.
Raised-red, flat black stripes, and the symbol only done once on each end.
Raised-black, flat red stripes, and the symbol only done once on each end.

Pattern available on request, for them as wants it.