Creation of a knitter part 2

 
Ah, grad school, land of studying you butt off and then searching for anything possible to take your mind off said studying. I enjoyed crafts throughout grad school, slowly teaching myself to sew and paint and build little theatrical models (as I was studying theater). The knitting was all but forgotten. The Harry Potter scarf needed some help come Halloween, being all basic stockinette stitch, the ends curled up into a sausage shape which eventually annoyed me enough to get out a crochet hook and ‘sew’ up the sides by single crocheting down the edges with the corresponding colors forming a very thick and somewhat lame tube scarf. Ah, but it was gloriously burgundy and gold and look good we did come all Hallow’s Eve, and things were swell.

Two years later came Serenity.

I knew little about Firefly the TV series other than my best friends Jen and her hippie husband Ruben loved the show. Crazy dog drooling loved the show. When it was cancelled there was much lamenting in their household, most of which I pretty much ignored. And when Serenity was announced there was much rejoicing, which was also ignored. Both Jen and Ruben were theatrical sorts. Jen and I had routinely dressed up in costumes to go see Harry Potter movies, and Ruben got it into his head that he felt left out. And so this happened:
Sitting, peaceably one night at the computer, I get a call. It was Ruben; all panicked as if someone had told him his cats were dying. “Jamie!” He practically yells, “Can you make me a Jayne hat?”

I paused for a second realizing I had no clue what he was talking about. “A what?”

“A Jayne Cobb Hat. I have a jpeg of it! Can you make one?”

“Ruben, what the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s a hat, you know, made with yarn like you do!”

“… crocheting?”

“Yeah, I think so. You’re crafty and I need one when I go see Serenity and I don’t know who else to ask.”

I sighed and said, yes, sure, I would see what I could do. His birthday was conveniently close and heck, making a present was better than buying Mr. ‘I don’t really like it’ a present so why not. I got on the internet and told him to send me his pictures. There was the man called Jayne in pixelated color, wearing the infamous hat. I zoomed in while he e-mails me website after website on potential hat making instructions and very quickly realized that this hat was not, in fact, crocheted. It was very much knit. I was back in the Harry Potter scarf conundrum.

I remembered how to knit… sort of. But I had only knit a long square, not a cone or hat, and this one required skills I didn’t possess… mystical skills like decreasing and joining. It was time for a new book and a new try (and new needles while I was at it.) The book ended up being the first Stitch N Bitch, the needles were bamboo circulars. The yarn was Lamb’s Pride Bulky because it was the right weight and had more colors than I could count, including passably Jayne Cobb hat colors. The amazing this I found was that using good needles and natural fiber, the yarn didn’t stick to the needles. It slid off beautifully without being too slippery. I was, in a word, amazed. So much that I started to actually enjoy the knitting.

Ah, but Jayne hats are chullo style, with earflaps. At that point in my career I didn’t have enough knowledge to knit them seamlessly or otherwise onto the hat, and I opted to knit the hat and crochet on the earflaps (my own design! Well, I suppose if you’re going to cheat you have to do it that way).

I managed to make two Jayne hats with the skeins I had purchased. One was a bit big, one was a bit small. I washed the bit big one in slightly warmer than needed water and it felted just enough to be the right size (god bless wool) and the bit small one luckily fit his wife, life was good again. But this venture into geek inspired knitting left me with an urge to knit, one that hasn’t yet been quelled.

So to blogdom and beyond!


Addendum:

Shortly before the creation of this blog I decided that my sad, sick little first project needed some updating. I also decided that I didn’t want an acrylic scarf. My summer and early fall project was a new Harry Potter scarf knit in the round so the edges wouldn’t curl with wool in a finer gauge. It was rather dull, but I love the result.