Comrade Leonine

Back to the awful puns, I'm afraid- I have a geeky friend who is very much into his soviet history, and is a very big fan of Lenin in particular, and asked me if I would be able to knit a Lenin doll. There are some soviet Lenin caricatures around, particularly the one above, and I'm told the beard and the cloth cap are the main identifying features.
However, I decided that getting the human features right would be a little too difficult - I think you need to get them *just* right to look good. So instead, I came up with this scheme - based on the lion pattern I've played with before, I'll make a little lion with Lenin's hat and beard - hence, Comrade Leonine :o)

I should say, I'm really not keen on communism in general, or the soviets in particular. I am, however, very keen on history, and people being interested in history. I should really read more of it myself.

So yay, happy knitting, and happy history-ing, people o/
Hugh.

Patterns!

Hey folks!
I've been putting a few patterns up on Ravelry lately, and it only occured to me recently that actually I have made it kind of hard to find them. So I thought I'd put up a quick post listing the patterns which are available just now, and try to post in future if I add any new ones.
I'll post ravelry links for each of them, as well as the direct links to the patterns.
So yep, here they are - if you want to give any of them a try, let me know(I'd love to know how they're doing), and happy knitting!

Crab torus
A stuffed toy based on a crab, incorporating a torus. Or you could make it with a disc. I think the pattern isn't entirely clear, hopefully I'll get around to making some edits soon.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/crab-torus
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_4hj5g7vfchttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_4hj5g7vfc

Cthulhu mittens
A pair of mittens featuring runes and symbols relating to the Cthulhu stories(with artwork borrowed from Chaosium). I think the shaping for the mittens was a little iffy, you might prefer to just use the charts - it would make a lot more sense to duplicate stitch them on once the mittens are finished.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cthulhu-mittenshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cthulhu-mittens
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_2dj92kqfdhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_2dj92kqfd

Orbital
A knitted 'd' orbital - actually 3dz^2, it represents one of the ways in which an electron can behave in an atom. It's quick, simple, geeky, and I'm told it would make a good baby toy.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/atomic-orbitalhttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/atomic-orbital
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_15dmv8q8chhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_15dmv8q8ch

Bee-hat
It's a stuffed bee, in a little pointy hat. I really like how the little dangly legs turned out, so I'm planning to make a few more.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bee-hathttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bee-hat
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_20wffw76fvhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_20wffw76fv

Feminist torus
A squishy huggable stuffed female sign. I'm totally delighted with how well the shaping came out on this(seriously, you'd be amazed how much maths is involved in this).
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/feminist-torushttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/feminist-torus
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_18t32hxqdqhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_18t32hxqdq

Lions
My little collection of toy lions, the Gay Pride. I really like this pattern, the shapes are all very clear and simple, and I like how they turn out.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lionshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lions
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_0dbvd8vgvhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_0dbvd8vgv

Trefoils
These are the two trefoil knots - one is a mirror image of the other, but no amount of fiddling will let you rearrange one into to other. They also have googly eyes and make good stress toys.
The pattern was written a while after I knit them, so it's really only "as far as I remember".
Also, in a minor correction, you really need to stocking stitch a row or two after you cast on - the pattern tries to make you start working short rows immediately.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trefoil-knotshttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trefoil-knots
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_11gbvw4jfzhttp://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7bhmbc_11gbvw4jfz

Hugh.

Marine research

Ok, for some reason I seem to have quite a few aquatic projects I'm planning to make at the moment, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post them all at once.

First, whales! I think I mentioned I was keen to make more whales, so there are likely to be at least a couple more. And given how much I enjoyed making the bee, they're likely to have hats. I have a bit of an ongoing hypothesis that all animals look better in fezs, so we'll see. It rather depends how silly I'm feeling at the time, but I think a small school of whales each with a different hat would be very cute. I suspect these will be headed to the Simpson neonatal unit, because I would like to send them more toys.

Second, pufferfish! I had an idea a few weeks back that it would be very cool to make an inflatable pufferfish. I played around with some stitch patterns, and I think I came up with a way for this to work. The fabric needs to be very stretchy, so the fish can inflate to a good size. More difficult to work were the spines - ideally these should show when the fish is inflated, but be concealed when it's let down. I think I can make this work using a combination of ribbing and a modified fur stitch, but it remains to be seen how convincing this will be as 'spines'. I still need to play around with the fins a bit, and see how much like a fish I can make it look, but I'm fairly confident it'll at least look cute when it's inflated.

Also, psalmon! (This is another of those awful puns) I'd like to knit a small collection of salmon, each of which will have a verse/phrase/something from a psalm sewn onto the sides. This might be tricky because they're likely to be smallish, so there won't be much space, and I'll have to work the shaping to leave a big enough blank patch for sewing onto. I think the fins might be a little tricky too, I think I'd like to make elaborate lacy patterns to represent the patterns on them.

And finally, hammerhead shark! There's something fascinating about their shape, which I think would be fun to try and knit. It'll be interesting to try to contrast this with the whales, see how well I can bring out the difference between them. I understand (female) hammerhead sharks are capable of undergoing parthenogenesis, which is my mind makes them badass feminists, so I'll be looking to make this into another feminist toy. I'm not quite sure how that will work yet, but I suspect it'll depend on what I can come up with to do with it when it's done.

So yes, lots of ideas, with varying levels of vagueness. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with most of them yet though

Erst-whale

Hey again!
This project is a definite contender for "worst pun I've com up with for a while". It started with one of the PhD folks mentioning how cool a word "erstwhile" is. I then decided it would be fun to make an "Erst-whale"- "erste" being german for "first", this consists of a whale with a large number 1 on the side.
I tried to make the pattern good and simple, the knitting starts with two flaps at the back of the body, then joins in the round and then continues up the body, finishing at the nose. The tail and fins are then made seperately. I'm very pleased with how the tail worked out - the idea was that once you'd made the tail, the two flaps on the back would form a nice join onto it, and I think that came out really well. I also put in a couple of short rows to make the tail curve upwards slightly, and am very happy with the effect there too - it's quite subtle, but I think it adds a lot to the look.
The '1' I duplicate stitched on, which is a bit of a new experience for me - I've tended to do these things with stranding, but am very impressed with how easy this was, and how well it came out. I'll definitely be using that more in future.

I kinda realised part way through too, that this doesn't really line up with any particular species of whale. I hadn't realised there was such a variety of shapes to the different species either - I've always thought this was kinda the 'normal' shape for a whale. I'm quite keen to try making a more realistic sperm whale at some point, mostly because the sketch I drew of one turned out really well, but also because I'll be able to make some kind of a Moby Dick reference out of it.

So yep, awful puns and a whale - woo!
Happy knitting!
Hugh.

Bee-hat

Hey!

So, this is a quick little project, based on an awful awful pun.
A little while ago, our preacher-guy had a series on "big hairy audacious thoughts", or "B-HAT"s, the kind of really big simple ideas behind christianity which are so big and obvious we can kind of skip over them.
So, I was a little slow, but I suddenly decided I absolutely had to make a little bee with a hat on. Given my taste in puns, I guess this was kinda inevitable really. So the plan was to just make this quick and simple - the head and body are just ellipsoids, the hat is just a cone with a ribbed brim(actually this idea is kinda borrowed from some awesome gnomes we had knit at city knitty a few weeks back), and the legs are based on the ones from the badger torus, long long ago.

I decided to make the legs quite long and dangly, and I really like how that turned out. You can kind of play with them, and they somehow seem really expressive. The wings I made a bit lacy, to make them look a bit filmy and light. The Mighty Nuala helped me out with that, and I'm very happy with how they turned out. So yay, I'm really very happy with how this turned out.
Slight problems, sewing up the body was a bit of a pain, with the stripes. I should really have knit it in the round, but hey. Also, sewing the wings on was a little tricky, I hadn't left much of a border at the bottom and it was kinda hard to tell which edge was which. But it seemed to work out ok, and hopefully noone will look too closely.
So yay! I'm just wondering now if the hat would look better with a little pompom? And after the fun I had taking photos, I'm not planning to take it around the botanical gardens and take many more. Oh, and more photos on ravelry!
Happy spring!
Hugh.

Boba Fett

Hi folks!

I've been forgetting to update this for a while now, so I've got a couple of designs and even some finished objects to post, so look out for those in the next few days. For today though - Boba Fett.
A member of the local scifi society pointed this comic out to me, and knowing that I like to make odd toys, challenged me to make a Boba Fett like the one shown there. It looked like fun, so I decided to give it a go. To my shame, I didn't actually know who Boba Fett was - I haven't actually watched the star wars films, so I had to do some research. Hopefully I've got all the important features.
The plan is for this to be just a small, quick thing, using nice simple shapes and very little planning. I want to say "amigurumi-style", but I'm not sure if that's specifically crochet. I think this will be a particularly suitable character for this, because I suspect almost all of the recognition comes from the helmet, so as long as that's there I suspect it's be pretty instantly identifiable.

So yeah, happy geeking!
Hugh.

'D' orbital

Hi folks!

A quick project to talk about today - last week I had a strange urge to knit an atomic orbital. The story goes that according to quantum mechanics, electrons live in atoms not as particular points, but as probability distributions. The standard way to represent these distributions is to draw surfaces enclosing 'most' of the probability. (I'm a little shaky on how this works exactly)
Surprisingly, the geometry of these surfaces can be quite interesting, particularly as the energy increases.
I decided to make the 3dz^2 orbital, which is my personal favourite - it's complicated enough to be very recognisable, while being simple enough to make some sense. I should say thanks too, to the Scientific Knitters group over at Ravelry for helping me figure out the shape.
I should say too that one of the components of this particular orbital is a ring, so this counts as another torus toy.


So here it is! I decided to knit the ring and the cones in different colours just to make it look colourful and nice, but apparently this has some physically relevance too - I'm told there is some kind of phase difference between the wave functions in the two parts. I don't really understand, but it's a nice coincidence.
I decided too to make the ring detachable, in the hope that this would make it more play-with-able, but this has the downside that the ring can't be tight enough around the waist to stay in place by itself. I guess I could make a second version in which the ring is smaller and sewn on to make it more realistic. But I kinda like it this way - it looks like it should be a child's toy, and I'd hope the detachable ring adds to this.
There's one slight problem, that I knit this on slightly too large a pair of needles, and the fabric on the ring part isn't quite as dense as I'd like. I should really have learnt by now that if you're knitting stuffed things you need to move down a needle size or two.

So yeah, it's all done, and I put the pattern up on Ravelry if anyone wants one of their own.

Happy knitting!
Hugh.