The Wow! Scarf

As you may have gathered from my Twitter or Instagram accounts this past weekend, I attended the 2015 Knitters Guild NSW Camp at Stanwell Tops. When I registered for the Camp earlier in the year, the confirmation message invited me to enter the Mystery Scarf Competition. The details were very vague–basically, you were supposed to knit a scarf of a certain size out of black and either white or cream. Inspired by my Ignite talk, I thought it would be fun to try to knit an actual mystery into the scarf. So I started doing research, and I came up with several interesting possibilities:

  • The Beale Ciphers – Very National Treasure, right?! And they could literally point you to an actual horde of gold!
  • The Kryptos Sculpture – Bonus points because it actually looks kind of like a scarf.
  • The Phaistos Disc – This would look better as a circular shawl, right?
  • Tamám Shud – *shudder* Too creepy.
  • Rongorongo – I feel like this would be neat as fairisle motifs.

In the end I settled on the Wow! Signal. This was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while he was working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University. When he saw the spike on the printout, Ehman circled it and wrote “Wow!” in red pen in the margins. The signal lasted for 72 seconds. It came from globular cluster M55 in the constellation Sagittarius. It looks pretty much exactly like what we’d expect an interstellar transmission to look like. It’s never been repeated, and we don’t know what it means. I like to think it’s an alien civilisation saying “Hello!”. So I knitted it into a scarf.

The scarf is knitted as a tube out of Morris Norway 10 ply in Cream using a 5mm circular needle. Starting from the left edge of the printout, I incorporated about 15 columns of numbers by duplicate stitching them on as I went. Once the scarf was long enough, I stopped the numbers and knitted in plain white to leave a space for the “Wow!” which I embroidered with red wool. I also embroidered on some additional pen marks, like the circles around the signal itself and some of the other numbers. As a final step, I added some tassles out of the remaining black wool.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out! I didn’t end up winning the contest, but that’s okay. I took the “mystery” aspect more literally than most of the other contestants did. (The winner did an amazing double-knitted scarf with a photo of her cat on it.) My scarf is exceptionally warm and nerdy, and I had a lot of fun making it.

Canva Comma Club Cushion

Hackathon PosterThis past Thursday and Friday, Canva held its first ever Hackathon. At first I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do for it. (I work with some really brilliant engineers, and my coding skills aren’t great.) But the sign-up sheet came out and it was clear that non-coding projects were encouraged. Then the organiser Chris Doble (jokingly?) suggested that “someone” could create cushions with commas on them. A-HA!

(The Three Commas thing is a running joke from the show Silicon Valley. As a start-up, we quote that show a lot. We even threw in some references as an Easter Egg in our Canva for Work videos.)

So I knew immediately what I would do: I’d sew up a cushion with the Canva logo and three commas, and then I’d use my LilyPad Arduino to make the commas light up. The end result turned out pretty spectacular. Read on if you want to hear how I did it.

Comma Club Cushion

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How to Make a Sock Monkey

I published this tutorial back in 2004, and it’s been pretty popular! I’ve now ported it over to my new site. You’re welcome to link to it, but please don’t reproduce without my permission.

Two finished scarves!

Two Scarves

Finally some finished items to show! Both of these are with wool purchased at the Convent and Chapel Wool Shop in Rylstone a few months back.

First up is the Zig Zag in Zauberball Crazy. I bought the wool without any idea what to do with it-“I just liked the crazy autumn colourway-but then I saw Gemma’s Show Stopper in the Easter Show last April and fell in love! So I asked her to share the link to the pattern, which she kindly did. (It’s here!) It’s a super simple three-row repeat and knits up gratifyingly fast. I basically just knitted until I used up every single bit of it. I love the way the horizontal ribbing lines up with the colour changes, almost like stripes. It’s also really smooshy and squishy and warm. Very satisfying project! You can see a close-up of the stitch pattern here. (Ravelry details.)

Next is the Linen Stitch scarf in Marlyn Alpaca. This stuff is SO SOFT. I originally intended to knit something with long lengthwise stripes, but I saw a sample of linen stitch and I was impressed how classy it looked. I thought it might make a nice “businessman’s”-type scarf for the Snook. So I casted on a bazillion stitches and then started knitting random width stripes of the two colours. Man, linen stitch rows take FOREVER to knit! I basically just knitted until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I put some fringe on both ends to finish it off. Very nice! He wore it to work today. You can see a close-up of the stitch pattern here. (Ravelry details.)

Little My Softie

I wanted to make a special present for my niece Cali, so I thought that I’d whip up a “Little My” softie. Little My is from the Moomin books, and she’s Cali’s favourite character. (I know because I sent her this Uniqlo t-shirt and she LOVED it.) So I started by downloading a line drawing and printing it out. I decided that I was only going to make a simple “two-dimensional” toy rather than try to translate her into full 3-D. I traced the drawing onto some felt and cut out the pieces. The trickiest bit was embroidering her face.

Embroidering the face

I used some acrylic yarn for the embroidery. Her features were done in black with a split stitch, and I used orange yarn to backstitch her hair (leaving long strands at the top to form her top-knot). Rather than bother with turning things inside-out, I just used a tight zig-zag stitch around the pieces (with wrong sides together) to sew the her head and body pieces together. For her hair, I actually tucked the long ends back down into her head before sewing her scalp so it couldn’t be pulled undone. It worked really well! I stuffed the head and body parts through the neck opening and then joined the two halves there. Then I zig-zagged across the neck to join and covered the resulting mess up with a cut-out pink bow-tie (tacked on by hand). I also zig-zagged around the arm openings (where her hands are on her hips) and then snipped out the inside bits. I had planned to use black felt for her hands and boots, but honestly I couldn’t be bothered at that point.

No big deal - just being the BEST AUNT EVER. #littlemy #handmade

The first thing my niece Indie said was, “Her head’s going to fall off I think!” Which may well happen. The whole thing was a bit of a bodge and I doubt it’ll hold up very well–the felt was starting to pill within a day–but I’ve decided to just treat it as a prototype. Cali absolutely loved it, and that’s all that matters! I’m thinking of redoing it in fleece and trying to make her a bit more three-dimensional next time…

Blackberry Cardigan and Argyll Vest

Yesterday I picked up my entries from the Sydney Royal Easter Show Arts & Crafts Competition. I entered two projects: a cardigan for me that had been hibernating 90% done for over a year, and a hipster vest requested by the Snook at Christmas. I’m really happy with how both of them turned out. (I didn’t win any ribbons this year, but I’ve given up trying to understand the judging criteria. That way lies madness.) Anyway, the details…

Blackberry Cardigan

Blackberry CardiganThis is a cardigan I started knitting for myself back in 2013 but never finished. I love knitting cables, and I wanted something warm and snuggly to wear in winter (and in my freezing cold office). The wool is Filatura di Crosa Zara merino wool, which I’d previously bought from Reecie in a destash. I’d knitted a couple things out of it previously, and I knew that it would give great stitch definition yet be soft enough to wear directly on my skin. I hate sewing up, so I knitted the body in one piece up to the arm holes. Then I split the piece and worked the back and two fronts separately up to the shoulders before joining them with a three-needle bind-off. I also knitted each sleeve in the round up to the sleeve cap, which I knitted flat. At that point, I lost my knitting mojo and the pieces sat in my craft room for well over a year. When I unearthed them, I realised there wasn’t a great deal left to do. I picked up and the knitted the giant shawl collar (which goes all the way around and includes the button holes for the front), then blocked all the pieces before sewing them together. I found the buttons at Sew Make Create. I’m really, really pleased how it turned out. I’m wearing it right now, in fact! (More details over at Ravelry.)

Argyll Vest

Argyll VestOver Christmas we were having lunch at a cafe in Newtown when the Snook asked if I’d knit him a “hipster sweater vest.” He so rarely asks for knitted things, I got really excited and pulled up Ravelry that minute on my iPhone to start searching for patterns. When I saw katarina’s Argyll Vest, we both knew it was the perfect one. Happily I had the pattern book it’s from already in my collection! We walked straight up to The Granny Square and picked out the wool on the spot. We selected three different “heathered” colours of Morris Empire 4-ply. The only pattern mod I made was to make the body a bit longer, because Rodd has a very long torso. Since the neckline is meant to start at the top of a diamond, I had to decide ahead of time how much length I was going to add (so I could add it on at the bottom above the ribbing). And of course, you can’t knit intarsia in the round so I had to knit the front and back separately. I love the neat geometry of intarsia and had a lot of fun seeing the diamonds emerge. The diagonal lines – which I learned are called rakers – were embroidered on with Swiss darning. Then I just had to block it, sew it up, and knitting on the bands. He really likes it! I think it’s going to get a lot of wear this winter. (More details over at Ravelry.)

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Boring yet satisfying sewing project: modified this shirt to have short sleeves! (One of long sleeves tore near cuff over a year ago.)

Boring yet satisfying sewing project: modified this shirt to have short sleeves! It had long sleeves when I bought it nearly two years ago from Sportscraft, and it was ridiculously expensive. Then one day I was putting it on before work and the damn sleeve just ripped straight across at the cuff. ARGH. I threw it over the bed post and literally left it there for a year. I thought about removing the sleeves entirely but wisely decided to start by shortening. The Snook said it looked good, so I just folded and hemmed them. Shirt rescued!

New dress: another Moneta!

I made myself a new dress! Still getting the hang of knits.

I made myself a new dress! Still getting the hang of knits.

This is another Moneta made with a light jersey print I got at Fabric-a-brac earlier in the year. It was only a small off-cut and the print is directional, so I had to keep it simple. I didn’t put any collar on it, and I used some simple white cotton knit for the bodice lining and pockets. I still find the whole “shirring with clear elastic” thing really annoyingly difficult, so it’s a bit of a bodge. (Maybe the elastic I got at Spotlight isn’t the right stuff?) When I first attached the skirt and tried it on, the waist wasn’t hitting me in the right place. So I undid it and moved it up about 2 inches. The whole project took less than two days. It ended up being a nice little sundress!