Totoro(s)

If you've seen the film My Neighbour Totoro, this'll probably make sense to you straight away. It's a wonderful film by Hayao Miyazaki, about two young girls living in the countryside for the first time. It's quite hard to explain why the film is so much fun, but 'enchanting' is very much the right word for it.
It features three woodland spirit... things of different sizes. The largest of these is Totoro, although I'm not sure if that's a name or a description, and it may of may not include the two smaller ones, but for my purposes I'm going to call them all Totoro.
So the plan is, I'm going to make a set of the three Totoros. There's a few patterns out there for these, and the best seems to be these ones:

http://heavens-hellcat.livejournal.com/420.html

I haven't been able to find a pattern for all three, and I'm particularly keen that they all be in proportion to each other. That's a little tricky because the big one is a lot bigger than the smallest(about 9 times, by my reckoning), but I think that's reflected really nicely in the animation, the size is reflected in the level of detail, which is something I'm really keen to carry across. And to be honest I just prefer to make my own patterns anyway, it's much more fun.

So that's the plan, I'm gonna knit me a family of Totoros. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with them, so if anyone has ideas, or would be keen to provide a loving home to a family of troll-thingies...?

Hugh.

Updates

Hey!
So, it's been pointed out to me that I haven't updated this for quite a while now - this doesn't mean that I've forgotten about this, just that I haven't finished any geeky knitting for a little while. Since I'm going away for christmas and won't be internetting much, it seemed like a idea to write some project updates, a kind of "geeky things you'll be seeing in the new year" :o)

So first exciting project - a few weeks ago I gave a talk to the maths department about the relationships between geometry and knitting, specifically focussing on how you might construct a knitting pattern for a Riemannian surface. I'm planning to post the slides and pass them around to people who I think might be interested, but first I want to make a few modifications. For copyright reasons I'll need to re-do some of the images, and I'll see if I can change some of the language to make it more accesible to a slighlty less mathematical audience.

The feminist torus is making good progress too - I've got all the maths sorted out, and I know how it's all going to work. It's on hold just at the minute awaiting more yarn. It's all shaping all quite well, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it'll turn out.
Slight problem is that I'm really going to need to make a second version before I'm clear enough on what I did to actually write down a pattern for it. And I'd really like to write it out, I'm hoping quite a few people would be keen to make one. So, I need to find a second person who would appreciate the idea of cute cuddly feminism to make the second one for...?

The cheshire cat scarf is well under way - the first cat is done, and I'm working away on the middle section, which is just plain stripes. This is a good project to do while watching tv or reading, so I think I'll get a lot of it done over christmas. Hopefully that means I'll be good and warm once I get back to the frozen north :o)

Maxwell's cardigan is making rapid progress too. I currently have the two front pieces and half a sleeve done. Since this is also mostly nice and simple, with only a little shaping of edges to contend with it's coming along pretty fast. It helps that the yarn is absolutely lovely to feel, so I'm extra keen to knit it :o)
The equation part is still to come, so I guess it'll slow down a little then, but I tend to find stranding quite addictive, so I doubt that'll be much of a problem. Since I'm planning on knitting this on the train, I'm hoping to get a lot of it done on the trip.

And finally, one finished item. This isn't really geeky, it's a baby cardigan which is on it's way to my soon-to-be-nephew/nieceling:



But I like to think awful, awful jokes are a kind of geekery of their own, so here goes:

What kind of a key cannot open a lock?
A monkey in an enormous cardigan.
(courtesy of Bob)

Happy christmas, everyone!
Hugh.

Knitting safari

Hey!
After a short break while I was avoiding doing the sewing up, the safari animals are now done!
I'm very happy with how the colouring turned out, I think they're very recognisable. I decided I was doing the stranding wrong though, I think you should really carry the yarn to the end of the row each time, even where the colour stops earlier, this seems to make the tension more even.

I'm very happy too with how the shaping turned out, they're nice and simple but I think they look a lot like the animals they're supposed to be. Particular thanks to Cathy for the suggestion of using drinking straws in the legs and neck of the giraffe - they make it good and strong while still being child-friendly.
I'm really pleased with their little faces too - I'm told safety eyes might not be too good for very small children, so they're just a couple of sewn stitches, but I think they work really well, and they both come out looking very cute.


The zebra, unfortunately, didn't go so well. I made a couple of attempts at getting the colour pattern right, but I wasn't happy with how either came out, the patterns in the stripes are just too subtle to knit well. And then I decided I didn't particularly like the shaping either. After the fun with the cow patterns I'm a bit wary of trying to put in a very prominent neck, and that's really a big feature of zebras. So the zebra is on hold just now. Maybe I'll come back to it when I'm feeling in need of a challenge, or maybe I'll just let it go.

More knitting in the near future!
Hugh.

Knitting week

Hi people!
Last week (13-20/10) was national knitting week, and to celebrate the folks at City Knitty decided to do some knitting for charity. After some discussion we decided to knit for the premature babies wing at our local maternity hospital. After discussing this with them, they told us what they'd really like would be some knitted toys - apparently they like to give presents to the little babies who're there over christmas.

Happily I just happened to have a toy-making project on hold which seemed perfect for the occasion. The idea was to make a collection of safari animals in the style of the lions, but using stranded knitting to give them patterns. I decided the best animals for this would be a tiger, a giraffe and a zebra. Unfortunately, in order to be baby-safe I won't be able to reinforce the giraffe and zebra legs, so there's no way they'll be able to stand up, but I figure they could always be suspended as some kind of mobile.
But I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out. I get the impression texture plays a really big part in how people identify animals so I'm curious how easily recognisable they'll be.

Hugh :o).

Kitty knitty

Hi people!
I've been thinking of new things to do with shadow knitting. One way I'm interested in is mixing colourwork with shadow knitting to overlay patterns(Bob is doing some similar experiments).
So I was fascinated when I saw these Chesire cat socks - if you remember Alice in Wonderland, when the Cheshire cat disappears, it's grin stays behind:

`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin,
which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice;
`but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever
saw in my life!'

So I'd like to portray this using shadow knitting. I'll make a cat design in shadow knitting, then I'll add the mouth with coloured yarn. Because the grin will be worked across the stripes, it will be visible from all angles, whereas the cat will be made up of raised and lowered stripes it'll only show up from some. The cat design will need to be very simple, shadow knitting isn't well suited to intricate detail, so it'll just be a very simple cartoony cat's face.
And I'll make this into a scarf. I haven't made a scarf for ages! I'll need to see what nice scarf yarn I can find which would suit this.

Hugh.

(Finally) finished Cthulhu mittens

The Cthulhu mittens have been languishing in the sewing up phase for far too long now- I'd finished the first one, finished the second one, decided the first one needed the seams redoing, and got half way through taking it apart, but hadn't got around to putting it back together.
I decided they'd make a good birthday present for my little brother, which added a little more urgency to matters, and they finally got done today. A little late, but hey. So here they are in all their runic glory.
I didn't get around to duplicate stitching the red highlights I was thinking of adding, which is a bit of a shame. I'm not sure if they'd've worked, but I would have liked to try it and see.

I think the seams on the two mittens don't quite match up, the top of the right one seems slightly rounder to me. I think that might be because I started sewing at the top on that one and on the bottom on the other. Hopefully that doesn't show too much. I'm also a little concerned that with the seams placed as they are the mittens don't quite lie flat when you take them off, the seams aren't quite at the sides.

Still, I'm very happy with them- hope little brother is too!
Hugh.

Super-bonus lion

So, here we have one more lion. It's just the same as the earlier ones, except the brown yarn is a little darker.
When the earlier lions were visiting church a while back, a teacher friend asked if it might be possible to get one of them to use in her school, she thought the children would be very keen on them. Since the children are way too young to deal with sexuality issues, it wouldn't be able to be explicitly gay, which I thought would be a bit of a shame since that was a lot of the point of them. It'd also mean breaking up the pride.
But still, this seemed like a fantastic thing to be able to contribute to, so I decided the best thing to do would be to make an extra lion for her. This one isn't gay, or at least it doesn't have any particular orientation- he's just a fun rainbow-coloured lion. He's also probably going to be named Parsley(after the very friendly lion from "the herbs").

In other lion news, the lion and the lamb are happily settled with their new owners, and they're named Leo and Larry respectively.
I'm still on the look out for things to do with the gay pride lions too...

Hugh.