I aten't dead!

Hello!
I haven't posted for *ages*, and was recently reminded that I really should.  So -- I haven't been knitting much lately following some pretty dramatic happenings in my life, which mean I don't have a lot of spare time lately.  That and forgetting to take pictures of things.
I have done some stuff though:

• I made a collection of rockets for a friend's baby, who was born 50 years and a day after mankind first made it to space.  There was a US Saturn 5, the USSR's Soyuz rocket, and the ESA's Arianne.  The Saturn 5 was the hardest to do, because there's so little distinctive shaping to it. But I forgot to take pictures, and hopefully (because all good baby toys should be) they'll've been heavily mauled by now and not too photogenic.
• Something decidedly NSF-blog-posting for (the awesome) Kate J.  I may put photos on Ravelry at some point, where there's a little more privacy.  I'd quite like to write a pattern for that one too.
• The Little Prince!  I read the Little Prince recently(-ish), and was very struck by one of the pictures, in which he's wearing this very flamboyant outfit, so I wanted to knit that.  I've got just about all the pieces done, but the sewing up is going to be a pain, so I've been putting it off.  I love how that shaping turned out, which is part of why I don't want to rush sewing up.

In other news, I recently obtained a Kindle, and they're totally the future of how to read knitting patterns, particularly since PDF seems to be the standard format for Ravelry patterns, so all of those can go on it.

So yes, that's me.  I'm not likely to have much to post for a while, but I will try to write something here from time to time.  Hope you've all had a good summer!
Hugh.

International Women's Day! -- with Cthulhusaurus

Ok, just a quick post now cos I want to get this up for Women's Day.
As I explained, Cthulhusaurus is a combination of T Rex and Cthulhu, loosely based on this image. Being an elder god, Cthulhusaurus is genderless. It is, however, pink and wears ribbons in it's hair*. Naturally if an elder god/giant carnivore mix decides to wear ribbons, it's best not to argue.

So yes, I thought this would be a fun little project with interesting gendery consequences. The design is relatively simple -- it's made of a main body, a pair of legs, and a head, with the coloured strips being knit and sewn on later, and the arms are (mostly) i-cord.
I'm not totally convinced the head is the right size -- I usually make heads too small, so this time I aimed really big, and may have overdone it. I love how the frilly strips came out, they add just the right dash of colour and interest.
Possibly the hardest part was the bow -- there's an extra flap knit on the head for this to tie on to, which was nice and simple, but tying the thing turns out to be *way* harder than I'd imagined.

So yes, I'm rather happy about this :o) I should really take it out for some better pictures in the sun, but as I say, wanted to get this up today.
Happy IWD, everyone!
Hugh.

Cthulhusaurus

Ok, another quick-ish project!
This was suggested by Leah, who said I should knit one of these. I agreed, but said that if I did, I'd want it to be pink and have a bow on it's head. Then things got a bit political.
While I do like pink things with bows on, I don't like that these are the universal symbols of femininity. So to reflect this, I decided that my Cthulhusaurus will not have a gender. Cthulhu doesn't, after all, so it makes sense. And like Cthulhu, if it wants to wear bows, you'd better not argue.

So that's the plan -- a T-rex, with tentacles, pinkness and bows, and is ungendered. Worryingly, this is still one of the less weird things I've knitted.
Hugh.

Feminist Uruk Hai

Plan for the future -- I want to knit a little troupe (horde?) of feminist Uruk Hai. Why? An awful pun of course:

It is an army bred for a single purpose: to destroy the world of Men.

The plan is to make up a simple Uruk Hai pattern, and replace the 'white hand' logo with a feminist sign. The hard part, I think, will be figuring out what distinguishing features the Uruk Hai have which make them different from any other small green humanoids?

Happy knitting!
Hugh

Predicate scarf

Ok, new project! Following on from the 'e' scarf, I'm planning to make a second scarf from the same wool. The concept of this is a little hard to explain.
Fortunately it's easier to describe the design itself -- it will be a plain grey scarf, embroidered in the multi-coloured yarn with "+5 resistance to predicates".
So, why? It's similar to Tea Cosy of +4 Wellness I made a while back (and hence to Cayenne's original on which this was based). This refers to role-playing games, in which objects can add or subtract different attributes from players.
And predicates. People define themselves in many different ways, and each of these definitions comes with a range of expected behaviours. Often, I think, people seek out identities in order to know what they should do. By "resistance to predicates", I mean the opposite of this, creating your own identity rather than using a pre-made pigeonhole. It's also intended to be a bit silly -- predicates include any property which can be assigned to a thing, so it's a bit ludicrously broad to claim resistance to them all (and probably counts as a predicate itself).

So yes, bit of an odd project, and rather hard to explain. And possibly involving misrepresentations of grammar. But hey, complicated is good!
Hugh.

e scarf

Hi folks.
This is a quick, simple little stripy scarf, made mostly because I like the idea of contrasting multi-coloured yarn with a nice solid main colour.
The design is based on the number 'e', or Euler's number. It's a remarkable number, and I'd say it's the second most important irrational number out there, and rather sadly neglected.
Euler's number is the base of the natural logarithm, as well as cropping up in differential equations, limits of sequences, and compound interest. It's also related to pi by the rather amazing equation e^(i*pi)=-1.

So, the scarf -- the lengths of the stripes represent the digits of e: the first stripe has 2 rows, the second 7, the third 1, and so on, giving e=2.71... (In fact it uses pairs of rows, since this makes the colours come out nicer)
As with most irrationals, unless you know exactly what you're looking for the pattern appears to be random, so it's just a nice stripy scarf.

So there it is, stripy e scarf!
Hugh.