Cupid panda finished!

Right, it's been a while since I posted anything here, so this is really a little out of date, but the cupid panda is finished!
It turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I'd expected, especially the shaping around the legs. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out, but it was always planned as a prototype, so hopefully the second version will be able to correct these faults.
The main problem, I think, is that the chest is just too big, which makes everything else look a bit small by comparison, but I think the arms and head need to be larger too.

The eyes are bothering me too, I think they're too big and staring, so in the second version I'll be using some smaller amber eyes, which I'm hoping will make it look rather less... intense.
I'm very pleased with the little wings though, they've come out so cute, and just about exactly how I was hoping they'd look.
I really like the little feet too. They took a couple of attempts, and the pattern I settled on was really quite complicated(and is based on a baby's bootee pattern.

There's a couple of more awkward problems though - first, people seem to assume he's a ghost panda, so I think he really needs something extra to emphasise the 'cupid' aspect. But I'm not sure how to do this - I could make a little quiver, but arrows would be a little tricky(maybe some kind of pipe cleaner arrangement, with little knitting heart tips?), and would make it very much not child-safe. Similarly I could make a little bow, but I think that would need pipe cleaners and would be a little dangerous. So I'm not sure - any ideas, people?
The other problem is that the legs are designed to tilt backwards a bit. I really like the posture they have, and I guess it's good if you're holding them but it makes it very difficult to make the things stand up. Maybe that's how toys should be though, more for holding than admiring?

Anyway, hopefully will get around to making a second attempt soon-ish. In the meantime, happy knitting!
Hugh.

Squid purse completed!

Hi folks!
I've finished making the Vampire Squid from Hell purse, so here we go with some pictures. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, particularly the way the bottom of the cloak ruffles up, and something about the shape of the body really makes me think 'squid', I think possibly it's how the eyes are placed relative to the fins.
Also, when it's wrapped up, it really doesn't look like anything in particular, which, again, I'm very pleased with, it makes it all the more suprising when you undo it and suddenly you have a squid.

I did take a few liberties with the shape to make this work better:
When the vampire squid wraps it's cloak over it's head, I think it doesn't cover the whole body - it leaves the top open so it can do bioluminescence tricks with photophores(which look like eyes) on the top. For the purse the cloak is a bit longer so that it can close properly.
The fins, I think, are squarer on the real vampire squid. I changed them to be more swept back to give it more of a squidy feel*, although I think this shape is really borrowed from a differnt kind of squid.
The biggest change though, is the eyes - I used amber teddy-eyes, where the original eyes are little pale milky blue spheres, with no features at all. You could probably do this better with some kind of beads, or possibly just stitching on a couple of baby blue spots, but I wasn't sure they would be recognisable as eyes. It might be worth trying though, I really like the original's eyes, they look so innocent and out of place!

The big problem I had was with the cloak - I wanted the tentacles to be cabled, but since they don't move across the fabric there was no easy way to do this. It would have been possible to cable back and forth by one stitch, so it wouldn't move much, but I didn't like that idea. Instead I worked increases down one side and decreases on the other, something like

Kfb, slip 1 to cable needle, K2, slip 1 back from cable needle, P1

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to give quite the same tension as normally cables, so they don't stand out as much as I'd like(although this might just be to do with the yarn I used). So you can't really see the tentacles on the right side. To correct this, I'd like to make a second version in which the tentacles are just ribbed. This would mean making the rest of the cloak reverse stocking stitch, but perhaps the change of texture will suit it. It will definitely make the whole thing a lot quicker and easier to knit, the cables seemed to take forever.
Sadly I still don't know what to do with one squid-purse, let alone two. I was thinking it would make a good dice-bag for roleplaying types, or something along those lines.

Also, it's been suggested** that when the vampire squid wraps itself up, it looks kinda like it's trying to disguise itself as a pumpkin. So here we have the world's first lol-hellsquid:


Happy knitting o/
Hugh.

* - Thanks Stephanie!
** - Thanks Clare!

Snail II

Hey folks!

This project is actually a little old, but I finished making a second version of the Snail torus! I've been delaying posting pictures of this so that he would be more of a suprise for his intended owner. He's now arrived safe and well down in London with Helen, so it's time for pictures!

Design-wise, there are a couple of alterations from the first version("Spiral"). Aside from a different colour scheme, the shaping on the tail is a little better - Spiral's tail was trying to be a little more complicated than it needed to be, and didn't quite work out. Similarly the shaping on the head and particularly the face is a lot simpler and I think works a bit better. That said, I really liked the expression Spiral had, but I don't think I could actually reproduce it. Mostly likely it was more a fluke of tension working out just right than anything, certainly I can't claim to have planned it. I think the tail might have been quite a bit longer too, though not by any deliberate decision.

I'm still not entirely convinced by my knitting of the short rows in places though, I don't think I got the tension quite right with the wraps, but hopefully that's just me, since I know where to look for them, and it won't bother other people. And I'm still not entirely happy with how straight the shell was. I'm not good at sewing at the best of times, and this is a particularly delicate


The big difference really is that this time I took notes properly, so hopefully will be able to write up a coherent pattern of this. I'm very happy with how the two snails have turned out, and I'm very keen to see how interested people will be in this design. (After I posted the first snail, I got a very nice message from a knitter who keeps giant african land snails - I had no idea you could keep snails as pets!)

Have fun!
Hugh.

Vampire squid from hell purse

Hi folks.
I'm not sure if you remember, but there was a news story a few months back about 'Vampyroteuthis infernalis' - I think biologists had managed to video one in the wild for the first time, but I'm not sure. It's name means literally "Vampire squid from hell", which is quite a name to live up to.
I found a video of this on YouTube(I'm not sure if this is the footage everyone was excited about?):

Squid video

But I for one think this is an awesome, awesome creature. It has a funky oxygen-gathering 'cloak', it does nifty bioluminescence tricks to confuse predators, and when threatened it can even turn itself inside out.
Then last night a friend was asking about ways to knit purses. Or course you can sew in zips and other fasteners to make good safe seals, but I was wondering about the little bags banks give you for putting coins in - they manage to seal quite securely without any extra pieces. And they do it by turning inside out(sort of).
So that's the idea for this project - to make a small knitted purse in the shape of a vampire squid, which you secure by turning inside out. I made some preliminary sketches of this and it seems quite plausible - the body will be a pouch with an opening towards the bottom, then the cloak will fold over to cover the body and fasten with a drawstring.
One of the things that really appeals to me about this(other than being able to tell people I'm knitting a vampire squid from hell, of course) is that most of the time the squid would be in it's inside out form, so you won't be able to see what it is. I kind of like how that reverses the ideas of 'right' and 'wrong' sides.

Then I'll just need to find someone who would like a vampire squid purse...

Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Baby photos!

Hi folks!
A little follow up on the Maxwell cardigan - Dave was good enough to send me some cute baby photos showing the cardigan in action.


Isn't he adorable? I'm suprised(pleasantly) how well it seems to fit, I'd pretty much just aimed big and hoped for the best. He seems quite happy to be promoting maths too :o)

More baby pictures, not to mention various pro-canadian propoganda, can be found over at The Urminskys.

Have a good week o/
Hugh.

Cupid panda

This project comes (rather randomly) from the comic Tea Club.
It's very cute, and centres around a university student who loves tea. (I think it's defunct now though) It featured a rather odd little story about Cupid pandas, which I think was a reference to an earlier comic by the same artist. Sadly I can't find that comic anymore, and you might need to see that to understand quite why I find the pandas so appealing. Suffice to say, they're not quite a sweet as they look.
So the plan is to knit a Cupid Panda. I suspect getting the shaping right will be a little tricky - it's easy enough to knit something roughly the same shape, but I think the cuteness with these things has a lot to do with the detail - getting the proportions just right, making everything curve just enough. I'm very interested though in how this relates knitting to drawing. I think with drawing, and more so with cartoons, the big skill is understanding what it is about an object that makes it recognisable, what the cues people latch on to are.
So I'm planning to have two attempts at this, hopefully the first one will let me get the shape roughly right, and with the second I'll be able to refine it to something that has the same cuteness as the original.

I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it once it's done though. My current plan is to have it done somwhere around Valentine's day, and send it to the premature babies unit, who apparently are always keen on knitted toys. I'm not generally keen on valentines day, but this scheme appeals to me for slightly convoluted religious reasons.

Hugh.

Maxwell cardigan

The Maxwell cardigan is now completed and has been passed to it's new home for baby-ifying. I've been pretty amazed at the response it's had around the maths department.
There were a couple of problems - the stranding wasn't quite as even as I would have liked, and particularly the last 'J' looked uneven to me. That might be just because I know where the mistakes are, so I'm tending to see them more. And it'll probably settle a bit once it's been washed a few times(particularly cos I didn't quite get round to blocking it properly).

The edges rolled rather more than I would like too, but I suspect this is more of a problem for trying to take good photos than it will be for actual wearing, when lying neatly isn't such an issue.
I'm a little concerned too that the yarn might not have been the best choice. I used RYC cashsoft, which feels amazing and I've been wanting to work with for a while, but I think from looking at the washing instructions that it might be a little delicate for use in baby clothes. So I'm hoping it wears well.


I wanted to say a little about the equations too(with assistance from Wikipedia):
The first is Gauss's law, and says that charge is the source of electric fields.
The second is Faraday's law. I'm not sure how you interpret that one really.
The third doesn't really have a name, but it says there are no magnetic monopoles. That is, there is no 'source' of magnetic fields like there are for electric fields.
The fourth is Ampere's law. The first term there, together with Faraday's law, imply that there are wave solutions to these equations- if I remember rightly, this was what first led Maxwell to suggest that light could be electromagnetic waves.
Some combination of the second and fourth one also explain the principle behind electricity generation - that you can create a current in a wire by passing it through a magnetic field.

So yes, they're pretty amazing. The cardigan itself is borrowed from Knitty's Devan design, which is nice, simple and elegant.
The baby in question is one of the Urminsky clan, so you can see more pictures over there, and hopefully we'll have some of Maxwell wearing the cardigan soon :o)

Hope y'all like it :o)
Hugh.