Filet Dragon Shawl

Hey again folks, time for some more not-about-hats posting, and this time a rare crochet edition*.

I've been having an odd urge to try some filet crochet(Ravelry) - this is a form of crochet in which you work a square grid mesh, and produce a pattern by filling in some of the squares. This can make some amazingly delicate and beautiful lacy designs, and the complexity of some of the designs is rather epic. (I should give special mention to City Knitty's own Sarah Moore, who has some absolutely stunning filet doilies.)

So, I'm planning to make a filet shawl. This is rather a foolish and recklessly overconfident plan, since I only barely know how to crochet in the first place, and this is a rather large project. But still, a knitxxor's gotta do what a knitxxor's gotta do.
The project is based on Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books, particularly Tehanu, which I tend the think of as the last one, though that's not entirely accurate. I'd say everyone should read this, but since I still need to read the later books I may not be one to talk.

[This next bit is going to be pretty spoilery... ish.] At some point in "Tehanu", there's a song sung, which just comes up in passing:

Farther west than west
beyond the land
my people are dancing
on the other wind.

This relates to a folk tale which is told, that once, long ago, there was only one type of people, and they had wings. Over time, they learned to make beautiful things, and some of them loved these beautiful things, so they stored them up and built huge fortresses to protect and defend them. Eventually, spending all their time in their fortresses, these people stopped flying and lost their wings, and these people developed into humans. The other ones though, preferred to live wild and free, never owning or storing anything, they kept their wings and developed into the dragons.
This is (broadly) what the song is about, wanting to be away with your dragon ancestors, soaring over the ocean rather than labouring away hording stuff. Naturally I can't explain it as well as le Guin does.
[/spoilering]

...so, the plan is to make a shawl with a big dragon motif across the back, and a border with this folksong written across it.
I made some sketch of how this should be laid out, and I'm liking how it's looking. I've sketched up some charts too, but they still need some finalising. And I've made up some swatches and more or less figured out how the filet technique works(thanks Cynthia!), so now it's on to getting it done!
I'll try to post some of the sketches once I have the charts sorted, assuming I can get them into a format I can thumbnail properly.

Also, knitting in public day this week!
Hugh.

* - because a crochet hook can be just as pointy a stick as a knitting needle.

Cthulhu toy

I'd kinda forgotten about this one - I made a little stuffed Cthulhu toy for local geek, and knitter, Rachel, and her imminent Norggling(I checked, this is apparently the approved term). It was a little ad hoc project, made up of nice simple shapes and largely made up as I went along.

Design-wise, the arms and legs have little sloped tops made with short rows which allow them to attach nicely to the body, and I'm very happy with how these turned out. The head is the most complicated part, it is knit as a ball down to the mouth, then you knit a few i-cords to form the first layer of tentacles. After re-joining and knitting a few more rows, there are a second row of slightly larger tentacles. All of the tentacles have short rows included to make them a bit messy and disheveled, they naturally don't lie flat.
I did toy with the idea of making a mouth-pouch to fit in between the two rows of tentacles, so that he could 'eat' things, but I'm not sure how child-able that would be. I experimented with a couple of different kinds of eyes - I had planned to use amber teddy bear eyes, but these green cat's eyes somehow really suited him, so I stuck with those. The wings are based on the design from the Cupid Panda, and again I was very happy with how the 'feathers' turned out. I like too how spiky the tops of them look, it gives them a nice evil feel.

The thing I like most about this though is the way the proportions all came together. The wings somehow add a kind of balance to the whole thing, and there's something about the big limbs which makes it just very huggable. The big problem was that the yarn was really too thin for the needles, so that when it's stuffed it's a bit see through and looks a bit thread-bare.


So yeah, there we have a cute little Cthulhu, all ready to set about indoctrinating the next generation of geeklets(I do love the idea of geek children, growing up with all this kind of stuff just being *normal* :o) ). And best wishes to Rachel, to Norgg, and to their coming Norggling!

Hugh :o)

Herman, the cabaret starfish

Right, another non-hat-based post!
I've been meaning for a long time to post things by other people, and this seems like a great time to get going with that, starting with a present I received from (the awesome) Miya.
This started off life following Knitty's Swell pattern, but was heavily modified and accessorised into a cute stuffed toy. It reminds me a lot of the style of Mochimochiland (which is awesome, and everyone should visit), particularly their Mochimochi-grass. I particularly like the little coloured tassle.


And of course, every stuffed toy needs a backstory, so here goes - Herman is a starfish, who works in cabaret, and dreams of becoming a star(in the astronomical sense). He's not really sure how a starfish develops into a full-blown star, but he knows this is what he truly wants in life. For the moment he's reading up on astronomy in the hope that the other stars will be able to give him some helpful advice.


The photos here show him on a visit to Musselburgh beach to see some old friends, and feeling a bit wistful.

...also, it's just possible I've been playing with stuffed toys for too long.
Anyway, thanks Miya, and happy knitting everyone!
Hugh.

More Hopf link fun

Hi again folks! I think I said I'd post some hats next, but am having some computer issues that will delay taking the photos for a little while. So, in the meantime I'll write a new project involving the Hopf links. I should add a quick warning - this is going to get quite political.

So, a while back I made a Hopf link, a pair of interlocking tori in pink and blue. These were a present for the awesome Juliana and family. (There was an earlier version, but I didn't manage to take pictures of those ones).
There was something which bothered me about them at the time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it - I figured it was probably a sexuality thing, that they were a bit exclusively heterosexual, and I should really make a gay Hopf link too to make things more balanced, but that didn't seem quite right either.
Just recently I came back to the idea, and I think I can see now why they bothered me - they're what feminist folks would call heteronormative, which is a rather broader concept - it's not just that they were explicitly heterosexual, it's that they push a view that heterosexual relationships are a necessary and unique way to live. If there were some gay pairs, that would be slightly better, but not by much. It's broadened the criteria slightly, but is still prescriptive in the same way. There are *lots* more types of relationships around, and the issue isn't really validating each type one at a time, it's realising that they don't *need* validating in the first place.

So, rather than making a couple more Hopf links to balance things out, I've decided to make a whole collection of them, all of different kinds. It's going to be a bit ad hoc and random, but this is part of the plan. There are a couple of things I've decided though:
- It won't include every permutation. It's not trying to classify everyone, it's more about celebrating diversity.
- There will be at least a couple of single tori, cos I think the "you don't have to be in a relationship" message is very important too.
- There'll be some tori which will be yellow or green, rather than blue or pink. Cos not everyone falls neatly into 'male' and 'female' categories, especially not in the 'blue' and 'pink' sense.
- There should probably be some kind of polyamorous grouping too, though I'll need to think through more how to do that one.
- There will be at least one that just doesn't really make sense. This will, broadly speaking, be to represent "variations I haven't thought of", but also to stress that there is some room for interpretation here, that what each one means can be subjective and might mean different things to different people.

So yay! That said, I don't know what I'll actually do with these when they're done, other than revel in having a big pile of stuffed toys. Suggestions, anyone?
Also, knitting-wise I'll be using this project to get some practice at continental knitting. I've just about got the hang of the basic motions, but I need a lot more practice and still find it quite unnatural, especially for anything other than basic knit and purl stitches. But I'm improving!

Happy knitting everyone,
Hugh.

Hugh.

Ada Lovelace day!

It's Ada Lovelace day today, and to celebrate some folks are getting together to write blog entries about a woman in technology they admire. I try to avoid putting too much politics here, but I figure this fits into the 'geekery' aspect of this blog.

So, I'd like to tell people about Graciela Chichilnisky. This will be largely based on her article "Sex and the Ivy League", so it's not exactly well-researched or cross-checked.
So first, who is she? She is one of the forerunners of modern mathematical economics, using geometric techniques to build economic models which have had some *huge* shifts in development policy worldwide.

Why do I think she's so admirable? Firstly, she is ridiculously talented. She skipped through college to start a phd in maths early, where in a 'test' year she proved herself by coming top of her class. (This despite raising a 2 year old child by herself and not speaking much english). And the rest of her career seems every bit as impressive.

Secondly, through all of this she remained deeply committed to helping others, to building models of international development that would help poorer countries and give them a more equal footing in the world, and particularly to the concept of sustainable development. She states that "the only genuine source of happiness in life is the feeling of being useful to others", and she really lives this.

Thirdly, she has had to go through some pretty shocking discrimination to get where she is. She says in this article that she recommends a policy of "turning dung into fertiliser" for women suffering discrimination, to take the 'energy' of that discrimination and turn it to their own advantage. When I first read that, it struck me as pretty blase, pretty dismissive, and maybe it's only that easy for her because she is so talented. But reading more about her, I'm realising that she *really* know what discrimination means, and even with her abilities it hasn't been easy.
Professionally, there have been several points in her career when important results have been attributed to male colleagues with serious career-threatening consequences, and spent at least 10 years in litigation against Columbia over pay discrimination. She also suffered more personal discrimination when she found she could not travel to Argentina with her first child - at the time the child would belong entirely to the father, a fact which kept her away from her home and her family at a particularly difficult time in her life. And she seems intent on using these experiences to help other people who are dealing with the same things.

So, Graciela Chichilnisky. She is an amazing mathematical economist as well as a fantastic person, and I would recommend reading more about her. I'm very much planning to myself :o)

Happy Ada Lovelace day everyone o/
Hugh.

Slogany mittens

Ok, I should post about this now for time reasons.
The idea for this comes from a discussion about Lisa-Anne Auerbach's knitting. LAA knits amazing designs with witty slogans on them, and is quite simply amazing. You can find her on Ravelry, and she also has a couple of websites. Her subjects are usually political, often provocative and always genius. My project won't actually look anything like hers, but I really wanted to plug her work.

So, sloganny mittens. The idea is to have a pair of mittens, with a slogan on each.
On the right:

"Community,
Identity,
Stability."

The motto of the world-state from Brave New World. And on the left:

"Listen!
Avoid Magic!
Be Aware!"

A saying from a short story "Solitude" by Ursula le Guin(in the collection "The Birthday of the World").
The first is the guiding principle behind the perfect(in some sense) human society, in which everyone is cared for and looked after, everyone is content and noone wants for anything. It's also entirely social - noone does anything individually or has(or needs) any privacy.
The second is a saying from what le Guin describes as a society of introverts - they live alone, not intruding on each other, everyone in perfect freedom. The meanings of the three phrases are a little obscure, and exactly what is meant by them is kind of the point of the story(go read it!).
So the two slogans are kind of opposite, but neither is really the whole story by itself - Brave New World is written as a dystopia, this perfect world is in it's own way a nightmare scenario, as would be the world of "Solitude".

I wanted to post this now because I notice radio 4 have a programme about Ursula le Guin up just now - it was broadcast on Tuesday, so folks in the UK will still be able to find it on iPlayer(I think iPlayer is only available in the UK, but I could be wrong?)

That's the plan!
Hugh.

A tank which is also a giraffe

Right, giraffe-tank pictures!
The tank part is made up of a simple block with an angled front and the tracks are garter stitch loops sewn on. I had intended to cover the tracks on top(apparently this is standard in tanks nowadays), but I found the thickness of the tracks would make this too bulky. The head and neck of a giraffe then replaces the turret part.

I like how the giraffe part turned out, but I really think the tank was a bit too simple. The track coverings might have improved this, or it might have been better to extend the giraffe's splotch pattern over the tank. Still, as a nice quick project I'm quite happy with it, and I think it nicely leads the attention towards the giraffe part.
Now, I need to think of something I can actually *do* with this?
(Pictured here with Ray, who happened to be wearing a tank-related t-shirt when I took it along to visit anime-people)

Coming soon - hats. Lots of hats.
Hugh.