Back when I was a kid, we had these popular books in which you got to Choose Your Own Adventure. Every so many pages along, you had a choice of how you wanted to take the story… kill the vandals (turn to page 3) or help the vandals (turn to page 10). So since I’ve finished up the third Starcraft stocking… its time to Choose Your Favorite! Here are the candidates:
Protoss, Zerg, Terran
So tell me… which one you like best, and I welcome your comments!
A few days ago my brain gave its little “oh no its April already!” snap and I knew I had to get to work on the April Stocking or risk running up against Derby Party and Mother’s Day guest housekeeping and planning. Since I had already conquered finding yarn that looked sort of like creep and sort of like the reddish magenta of the zerg logo, that’s what I decided to tackle.
This stocking is done with the purl side out, which breaks up the lines a bit more like creep I hope!
This month I tried a non-traditional stocking heel approach in which I added the heel to the stock after I knit the main part of the stocking. After my first trial run, I decided the stockinette side of the sock looked not “creepish” enough and decided to swap to the purl side. The cuff is actually crochet. Being all manner of particular I see all the parts I wish looked “better.”
Being the third Starcraft stocking, I can now check that game pretty much off the list.
The Protoss are marching into March with this month’s Christmas Stocking! (Ok that’s a terrible pun, I admit it) However, I do like the Protoss colors. I decided to take the gold and dark blue up in small flecks of additional color in the hanging loop.
Who says Protoss don't have a gift giving holiday?
This stocking is a one-sided design, suitable for filling with gifts, although if your gifts are of terrazine or vespene gas you may want to use another container first. Highly suitable for hanging on a pylon, although pylon power is not required! (Which is good because no one wants to hear “You Must Construct Additional Pylons!”)
Here is a little closer look at that Protoss logo:
Hey! Listen! its only 7 days into the month of February and I’ve gotten my stocking done! I started this one with the desire to have a slightly nicer cuff. So there are bobbles and Triforces.
How fitting that the Triforce is encircled in a stitch called the Trinity Stitch!
After that I went with a classic white stocking with a green heel and toe to complement the cuff. This one I went a bit longer…. and then finished it off with a Link on one side and a Princess Zelda on the other. I am not super happy with the pink of the faces and arms so I may redo those into a slightly darker shade to differentiate them more. (Mental Note: Add “flesh” to yarn shopping list)
Do you know how hard it is to find Creep looking yarn? Or the right combination of magenta and burgundy for a Zerg logo? This is just one of the quandaries a knitter of geekery things finds them contemplating in the yarn aisle.
With the danger of crossing some fashionable holiday boundary… I went with a nice solid black Christmas Stocking. Over knit stitch with a golden Terran logo.
So this year I decided to get off my bum and make my crafting work a bit harder for me. So my resolution/goal this year is to knit one Christmas Stocking each month from now through October, and then list them for sale in October/November. I worry that I am not a super fast knitter and I am hoping this will give me a nice little pile of stock that hopefully some people are interested in.
So for this month, partially inspired by the amount of yarn I still had after finishing my last laptop case, I present this month’s stocking… the “Kirk”
Kirk is a 2-sided design, so it can be hung facing either direction. Laid flat, and unstretched he is 8 inches wide and 15 inches from cuff to bottom of the heel. He has a sturdy thick knitted cord suitable for hanging.
Pattern adapted from the cross-stitch pattern created by Nancy Sims seen here.
So I hinted at this one in my last post, but I’ve held off posting until I was able to give it to my very Trek fan friend, Todd. Personally I would have felt a little tacky to post it, have him see it and then later given it with an “oh yeah and its yours” so anonymous and partially anonymous (Hi mom!) internet people had to wait.
One fleece lined, Captain Kirk flavored laptop case. Pattern is the same on both sides:
What's a laptop cap'n? Well its like a Tri-corder only larger and with a viewing screen.
Properly oriented Pokéball (white side down)
Ben has a friend/co-worker that is majorly into Pokémon. He also commented that I should make him a pokémon laptop case. While I could have gone with something simple like a three color pokéball design, naturally I didn’t go with JUST a pokéball design.
So I employed the finest in friend espionage to uncover which was his favorite Pokémonster.
Naturally he didn’t like something simple likeJigglypuff or everyone’s meme favorite Mudkip; his favorite was Rapidash, a flaming unicorn type.
Game Sprite of Rapidash
On the plus side game characters are all pixel based sprites, which makes pixelating an image into a stitch chart relatively easy. 1 pixel = 1 stitch. So finding a sprite image of Rapidash wasn’t too difficult.
However, game design and development has come a long way in building up from things like Space invaders of 11 pixels and one color creatures to the mighty Rapidash with his 80 by 80 pixels sprite with multiple colors even for shading.
So I started knitting, but when I finally got the completed Rapidash panel side done, it was clear that this was not going to be small enough to be a laptop case. And so a messenger bag design was born. On the back side, with the layered fleece behind it being the laptop zipper pocket was the Rapidash side of the bag.
Rapidash sprite in knit
I used some bouclé yarn in autumn colors for my fire details, and mixed a strand of light colored needlepoint yarn with my darker beige in places to make an in-between shading spaces. My first attempt was to knit with all these colors going all the time but it was rather chaotic, so I stuck with doing a stitch over my red and white stitches in the end.
The other side was a rather simple Pokéball design with a giant silver painted button for a clasp.
Pokébag with button clasp
Inside, the bag is double fleece lined (red on top of white) which enabled the feature of a zippered laptop sleeve on one side and a double pocket for Kindle and 3DS on the button side of the bag.
I make my own knit grocery bags. There… I said it. It was the first type of bag I tackled after making scarves and hats, when I decided I should attempt to make something rather practical and useful. Sadly my photos for this post are not the best, but I thought you’d see enough to get the gist of my environmentally conscience thumb.
Newly Knit, Hot off the needles
My first bag, I followed this pattern from knitty.com. I actually made larger i-cord handles for mine, but to me the bag felt just a bit too shapeless when I finished constructing it out of my cotton yarn.
So I decided the only solution was to use what I’d learned to build my own bag. I followed the same directions for the base, but when I got to the sides, I decided the solution was to use the YO/drop pattern I learned way back in the very early days of making scarves. To further enhance the effect I swapped from my smaller needles to a larger size for the yarn over row and then back to the smaller needles as I dropped the yarn overs off for the next row. This resulted in a neat striped solid/net look.
Secondly, my experience with the i-cord handles on my first grocery sack led me to consider that perhaps just a simple knit every row handle would suit this style better, giving it more area to grip at the top of the bag. I then crocheted the handles through the rows onto my bag in the hopes of it turning out capable of bearing a load born of the bag clerk learning that knit stretches and then deciding to bag on the principal of discovering just how much the bag will hold.
Strength testing, with about 20+ books in the bag.
I really enjoyed how the pattern came out, learned that shorter handles at first do stretch out over time, and had nothing left to do but give the bag(s) a trial run. But what of the truly heavy items…. would my bags stack up? I’m happy to say that repeated testing is showing that indeed they do stand up… incredibly well. In fact, I strength tested this green one by loading it up with as many books as I could fit into it… which was someplace in the 25 paperbacks region. I was at a point where I was more worried for the nails holding my peg rack.
The bag pictured in this post went on to carry about a bushel of fresh picked peaches over last summer.
I’ve made this pattern in a multitude of sizes from Costco-mega-size to the personal half a bag size. Unless they need it sooner, I toss them in the wash about once a month to keep them clean.
Knit this up real quick for a friend after they foolishly linked to a cat in WHM hat/cape picture.
+1 to Awesome Healing
Misscarlotta's Knitting & Quilting 