NaNoBlogMo 6 - Digital Photography

I'm hoping that I both get power back and have time to work on blog posts this weekend. In case I don't have the opportunity though, I am writing this post ahead of time for Sunday. Along with my video post from yesterday, I thought a post of photos would be a nice easy post for a Sunday (although considering how much of my projects involve knitting, I am going to get all my non-knitting topics used up by this time next week...oh well!)

I took a digital photography class in college that was really interesting. On top of learning interesting things about shutter speed and why I should never use flash, I got to play with photoshop. One of my first projects involved using a camera stand to take different photos in the same place and combine them. I used myself as my subject so I wouldn't have to bother anyone else with how fussy I was about the whole thing, and went off to my campus's Great Hall for a photoshoot. My results were the two pictures you see in this entry. Thanks to the timer on my digital camera I could aim the camera and press the button, then get to where ever I needed to be.

For this "Dinner of Me" picture, I set the table and chairs so that I could easily get into each seat without moving ANYTHING. That way the only thing I would be editing in the combined picture would be adding me (and my shadows, as it turns out, which made things more difficult than I originally planned).

I like the idea of having a dinner party with different parts of my personality, or with me from different stages in my life, but if this picture is any evidence, not all of us would have a good time.


My other picture "Attacking Myself" was my second attempt. The Great Hall is a large room (as the name would imply) and the delay on my camera isn't that long. Clearly I did not think these things through. For this picture I had to RUN with my SWORD across the big room and get in place before my timer ran out. An interesting experience. I took far more pictures of me posed with my sword than I needed, knowing that there would probably be some overlap. Its an odd picture, I like the dinner party one better, but I still like the idea of it.

NaNoBlogMo 5 - Senior Year Chessboard Fight

So after my very wordy post from Friday, I figured a nice video would be a good break on a Saturday. In my post yesterday, I mentioned that in my senior year medieval festival I played "Bobo", a depressed drunken jester. At that same event, I fought on the chessboard against the gypsy Nicu (aka my friend Tom). If you want to just watch the video, go ahead, if you want to know a bit more back story, just read below.



I didn't fight on the chessboard my freshman year, something that I regret now. I had done boffer fighting a bit, but it didn't catch my interest, and I thought that stage combat would be similar. I was ON the chessboard and participated in the melee at the end (mostly shouting nonsense and trying to kick my friend Zach), but that was it.

Sophomore year I was required to fight. I had the final (winning) fight against Tom; pirate whore against gallant knight. I threw myself into learning stage combat 100%. Sure, I thought it was something I wouldn't enjoy, but if I was going to do the damn thing I was going to do it RIGHT.

I LOVED IT. It had the violence and deadly grace of martial arts with the choreography and showmanship of dance...my two biggest hobbies back in high school. And I was so lucky to have Tom as my fight partner, someone else who was experienced in sparring, not afraid to take a hit and willing to put in the crazy amount of extra hours of practice we did. In my three remaining years of college medieval reenactment, I always fought him (although one year I fought him AND my friend Elysse, a video and story I will probably post later this month). The video above is actually from my least favorite fight of ours, but since I was just talking about my character from that year, I thought this would be a nice transition.

For people who haven't done stage combat before, a lot of it comes down to trust (well, probably 2 parts insanity and 3 parts trust). In the video above, at about 2:30 in, Tom swings his shield mere inches from my face two times in quick succession. In a bar fight we did the year before he lifted me up by the throat and slammed me into a table. Sure, we did get scraped up quite a bit over the years, but I never felt like I was in danger and I was always having fun.

For this fight in particular it was a bit of a challenge for us. Neither of our characters should really know how to fight, so we were trying to fight but also look like we didn't know how to fight. It was a very odd experience. Plus, to add humor and to fit my character I was supposed to be getting progressively drunker as the fight went on. I think my favorite part of the fight is actually all the stuff that happens once we get rid of the swords: me hitting him with the flask, him slapping/punching me, our dialogue.

It is a dream of mine to do reenactment again, and largely because I want to do stage combat again. I have two lovely stage combat swords just aching to be used. I know for a fact that if Tom lived closer we would probably choreograph random fights for the hell of it, but alas. Hopefully next year I will be able to fit working in a Renn Faire in my schedule and will have more insane stage combat stories to write about.

NaNoBlogMo 4 - My Gleeman's Cloak

I thought I would take a little break from writing about knitting projects and tell you all about a sewing project of mine. Like I mentioned in my post about the quilt I made for some friends of mine, I only recently learned how to use a sewing machine. As in a few months ago just learned how to use a sewing machine. I never really let that slow me down, though, and for years I sewed small projects and did repairs. When I earned patches as a girl scout, I sewed them on a sweatshirt. When my mother and I made me medieval dresses, I sewed on the buttons and made matching belt pouches with the scraps. But I think the project I am about to tell you about is the most hand sewing I ever did on one project.

I also mentioned in that quilt post that I was a member (and for two years a cho-chair) of my college's medieval re-enactment group. For our winter dinner and spring festival every year we had a central plot as well as plays for entertainment. I always seemed to be cast as the characters that were rather....let's say esoteric. In my four years I played Grendel, a dragon, a pirate whore named Pillow Fuckall, a deranged bishop, a crazy old Irish queen (seen here at the left), a cross-dressing fletcher named Joseph(ine), and in my final event... a drunken depressed jester that everyone called "Bobo".

Bobo was a favorite character of mine. For one thing, it gave me an excuse to learn how to juggle. I also got to stumble around, slurring and drinking out of a flask all day. I can't remember at what point I decided to make myself a cloak for my character, but once it was in my mind, I knew exactly what I wanted.

Let me back up and say that I was (and to only a slightly lesser extent I still am) a huge Wheel of Time fan. I cried the day I found out that the author, Robert Jordan, died. I actually picked my freshmen college roommate, Meredith, almost entirely because we were both fans of the series. I am currently trying to reread the entire series (I'm on book 5 now) since the last few are going to be coming out soon. After all these years of reading the books, I figure I might as well finish them, but since I haven't read most of them since high school, I need a refresher.

In the books there is a character called Thom Merrilin. He is described as a gleeman (basically a poet/bard/story-teller/juggler/acrobat/all-around-entertainer) and his signature clothing item is his cloak. It is often described in the book and always the same way: that it looks like it is made entirely out of patches, and that those patches flutter whenever the wind blows or he flourishes his cloak. What a great image. When I decided to be a jester, I knew I wanted to try and make a cloak like Thom's.

I found a large piece of purple fabric that was roughly cape-shaped in our attic to use as a base. Then I raided the costuming room and found a large supply of cloth samples, each about a foot square, which I knew would be perfect for me. I donated some larger cloth pieces in exchange for the samples, then cut each sample into six equal pieces until I had quite the pile of patches.

Once again I must bemoan my lack of blog or notes from earlier because I can't even really remember how I started. I believe I started from the bottom up, slightly overlapping each layer as I went, but I can't be sure. I do remember sewing with the longest thread I could comfortably manage on my needle, sewing patch after patch in a straight line until I ran out of thread, only to start again with a new piece. I also remember sewing the majority of it while I was alone at my parent's cabin during spring break before the festival (with breaks to practice my juggling of course). I made sure to only sew the top of each patch to the cloak, keeping with my dream of making it like Thom's, so that the patches would move and flutter.

Once the patches were all on and I had sewed a checkered shoelace around the neck to tie it on, I decided to take it a bit further. I sewed a few random buttons on, just to add another dimension, as well as a few jingle bells. With my cloak, jester hat and a braided ribbon with bells on my ankle, I was a rather noisy jester.

All-in-all, I was happy with how it came out. It looks a bit ramshackle, but being a cloak made of patches, owned by a drunken, depressed jester, how else should it look? I had a fun time whipping my cloak around the day of the festival, listening to it jingle and watching the patches wave about. At left you can see that the hat I wore as a bishop the year before also made an appearance. (I actually made the hat as well. I just used cardstock to make the shape, then covered it with white fabric and wide black ribbon, held down with tape. Viola!). I need more opportunities to dress like a fool, clearly I do it so well.

Sadly, I haven't worn this cloak since the festival. I have a few other cloaks that are less ostentatious that I usually wear for faires or even out on a normal day. But I'm happy knowing I have it, and I am ready should a day come when I need to be a jester or a gleeman once again.

NaNoBlogMo 3 - Jayne Hat

I am a nerd. Dork. Geek. Weirdo. Whovian. Nerdfighter. Whedonite. Whatever you want to call someone who likes quirky things. And I wear these labels proudly. I am still working on my Pippin scarf, and will post an update of how it looks so far later this month (note: I can't work on it much now because I sure as heck ain't doing colorwork knitting in the dark!).

Celebrating my nerd-pride and continuing my NaNoBlogMo digging into the past, I want to tell you about my Jayne hat. I watched the entire series of "Firefly" in about a week in September 2005. I know this because "Serenity", the movie based off the series, was released on September 30th, 2005, and when my friends discovered late in September that year that I had never seen the show, they vowed to have me watch the entire series before we all went to see the movie on opening night. I really can't tell you how many times I have re-watched the show since then, but I can tell you its a lot. So I have seen the episode "The Message", where Jayne receives a knitted hat from his mother many, many times.
Being both a nerd and a knitter, I thought I could probably recreate that mighty fine and cunning hat. If I remember correctly (damn past me for not keeping a hobby blog!) then I first made a Jayne hat for my dear friend, roommate (at the time), and faithful facebook-wife, Claire for her birthday. She was the one that took my Firefly virginity and sat with me for that week of rushed episode watching. Who better to receive a Jayne hat?

I do remember the hat being a lot of firsts for me. It was my first hat knitted in the round (I had tried an odd method of knitting a weird shape and then sewing it up without much success previously), my first hat with a pom-pom and certainly my first hat with earflaps. This was when I was in my "I'll just look at something and figure out how to knit it, screw patterns!" stage, (who am I kidding...I am still in that stage) so I really just winged it. No swatches to test for gauge, no looking at similar patterns for help, just casting on and hoping. I put on the earflaps with a very scientific method of "trying on the hat and putting markers where my ears are and then picking up some stitches and hoping that when I am done knitting that they are big enough and in the right spots and roughly symmetrical".

With a lot of flying by the seat of my pants, I soon had three Jayne hats. One for Claire, one for her boyfriend and one for me.
I really don't wear my Jayne hat as much as I should. I like the idea that it can serve as a beacon to find other Firefly fans.

Looking back, I am surprised that the hats turned out as well as they did considering how little (comparatively) I knew about knitting and how little planning went into them. It also makes me realize that I haven't knit too many hats. Maybe its time to change that.

NaNoBlogMo 2 - Starting Off Small

Starting off easy in my NaNoBlogMo challenge, with something small and cute. I wish I could say I made the adorable creature you see in the picture above, but I can only take credit for his jaunty scarf.

That's Zeraffe (as in part Zebra/part Giraffe). My friend Benno (real name Paul), had Zeraffe with him in college. I remember the months were getting cold and Zeraffe has a rather long neck...clearly he needed a little something to keep warm. I dug out some leftover chunky red yarn I had from making a friend's blanket and whipped up a simple garter stitch scarf.

I was surprised and happy when I saw this picture on Benno's facebook about two years later, with Zeraffe still wearing his scarf. The picture above was taken in Nanjing, where Benno studied for a semester (apparently Zeraffe did too!).

I can't really remember at what point I went from buying only what I needed to make my current knitting project (and using up most if not all of it), to buying yarn with no project in mind and collecting any leftovers. When I first started knitting, if I didn't have a project in progress then I had no yarn. Now I have a stash of yarn that I think would make any seasoned knitter proud. While it does tend to take up more than a fair bit of room, it does allow me to do projects on the fly, such as Zeraffe's scarf.

NaNoBlogMo - Starting With An Excuse

In an attempt to get back to posting with some regularity, I plan to attempt a "NaNoWriMo" like challenge and try to post in this blog once a day in for the entire month of November...aka NaNoBlogMo.

Just as a head's up, however, thanks to the lovely snow storm that wrecked havoc this weekend, I, like the majority of Connecticut, currently have no power at home. Thanks to a gas fireplace and gas stove (not to mention my trusty headlamp), my family isn't too bad off. Other than no hot water, no cell reception and the fact that we likely won't have power back until the weekend or later, we are doing fine. This does mean that my grand plan to post everyday might be a bit difficult, but I hope to still complete my personal challenge.

Now, previously my entries have been mostly updates on what I had most recently cooked/crafted/improv-ed, a format that won't really work if I have to post everyday (unless you want to see a picture everyday of a scarf that has a few more rows added to it for 31 days straight...the craft equivalent of watching grass grow).

My plan is to post pictures of things I have previously made or done to create a bit of my personal hobby history. For years I made things and sold them or gave them as gifts without taking pictures of them, so I really have no record of what I've made. This will serve as a fun excuse to try and dig through my history. I have already made this plea on facebook but I will make it again, if you have anything that I have made, I would love it if you could take a picture of it and text/email/facebook it to me so I can post about that. Thanks in advance!

Well, wish me luck on my challenge (and wish me some power!)

-Stephanie

Geeky Scarves: Polling the People

If you had to choose to make one of the three scarves below...which would it be?


The first is one version of the scarf the 4th incarnation of The Doctor from "Doctor Who" would wear. I've been rather "Doctor Who" obsessed recently, and though I sadly must admit I have never seen a Tom Baker episode, I feel a certain affinity towards him just from being exposed to the culture. I plan to watch his episodes someday, I promise! And the obscene length is not a deterrent for me since I tend to be a relatively fast knitter and its all straight garter stitch.


The second is Pippin's from "Lord of the Rings". Pippin was always a favorite character of mine and my LOTR obsession in high school led me to being very active on various forums, primarily one that was Billy Boyd/Pippin based. I even was sent my very own "wee scarvie", which was a tiny braid of yarn in the colors of his scarf, and made for other "loons" to recognize their own. His would probably be the least recognizable if I just wore it out in public.

The third is a Hogwarts house scarf from "Harry Potter". The most popular version for fans to make/buy/wear is the Gryffindor house colors, but I don't think that fits for me. Thinking about it recently, I suppose I would probably be more fitting in Hufflepuff, but since Hogwarts is for school age children and I was definitely more focused on my studies at that time, I would probably make a Ravenclaw scarf. (Like the one to the right.)

(Look....the word "geeky" is in the title of this post, ok? I could talk about this stuff for hours.)

While I hope to make all of these one day, I would probably go crazy trying to make them all at once, and the likelihood of having any done by the time winter arrives if I tried would be laughable. So I decided to wash my hands of making the decision myself of which to make first and I polled my friends on facebook.

I'm not sure why, but I thought for sure that either the Hogwarts or Doctor Who scarf would win. Much to my surprise, Pippin pulled ahead and was the clear choice. The argument most people had was that Doctor Who scarves and Hogwarts scarves are to a large part overdone, but you rarely see a Pippin scarf. A good argument, I feel!

With the decision made for me, I went out this past Saturday to my LYS and started a hunt for the right yarns. To me it looks like the yarn that makes up the houndstooth pattern is a variegated yarn (rather than a bunch of different colored yarns), so my first quest was finding a variegated yarn that contained the same color scheme. I also needed defined colors and frequent changes, but not so much that I would get a checkered pattern ...I needed stripes. Then once I found that yarn I would need a background blue/gray yarn that was a similar fiber and thickness. Easy, no? Answer: no.

With help from the lovely Village Wool ladies (and after scrounging around the shop for six rotations), I finally decided on the yarn you see above.

Once I got it home I realized that the color runs were probably a bit too long. It was likely I was going to end up with full repeats of the pattern in one color instead of midpattern changes. So last night I bit the bullet and began a rather long and boring process of dissecting the skein into its different colors, cutting those stretches into smaller bits, reorganizing them into a color change pattern I wanted, and then reassembling the whole shebang into a bit of a Frankenstein-esque skein. I knew from the start of this project that I wasn't going to be heartbroken if my scarf isn't a dead ringer for Pippin's, but I wanted to get as close as possible without going overboard. A couple hours of skein surgery to end up with a scarf I know I'll be a lot happier with is worth it in my eyes.

I've got a few repeats complete already on the needles and I'll keep you folks updated with my progress. I'll take a picture of it once its big enough to actually see the pattern.

Wish me luck!