According to the latest Serenity comic, Jayne’s mother’s name was “Radiant.”
Just call me Radiant Cobb.
On a related note, anybody want to test-knit my new free baby Jayne hat pattern? I think it’s ready for release, but I’d like to have someone else actually knit it before I put it out there. I can pay you in nice yarn.
ETA: I have a taker. Thanks!
I had a customer ask if there was anything I could do to make his hat look more rustic. I explained that at this point, my fingers just kind of do what they do, and it’s very difficult for me to make my stitches uneven. I told him there was no guarantee that his hat would look any different than the one in the photo on the site, but that I would do my best.
So here’s what we have! It is indeed more rustic, although the detail doesn’t show up well in the photo. I periodically pulled my stitches extremely tight to make for a more uneven fabric. I used a longtail cast on instead of a cable cast on. But there was one thing I did that I think made a subtle but significant difference.
A while back, I was trying to get some local folks to knit this hat for me in hopes of farming out some work. (Note: if you are reading this and have knit a hat for me, I am not referring to you.) It didn’t quite pan out. It just wasn’t quite the way I did it, and I really wanted to have a level of control over what went out that I couldn’t get from hiring a contractor, as it were. However, I did keep a couple of these, even though I didn’t feel I could send them out. So for this guy’s hat, instead of yarn nice and new from the cone or skein, I unravelled an existing hat and re-knit the new hat with the old, kinky yarn. It gave it different textural quality, particularly along the cast on edge and on the ribbing at the base.
Obviously, this isn’t something I can do for every hat, since I don’t have a supply of spares to unravel just lying around. If I were to do this again for someone, I’d charge significantly more, because MAN did it slow me down to have to consciously think about my stitches. I can knit a Jayne hat in my sleep. Literally. I’ve half-nodded off and woken up a minute later to realize that I’ve knitted another row. But it required more thought to make my stitches look amateurish. Oddly, knitting this Jayne hat was an interesting break from Jayne hats.
Another nice knitting break is this. Sure enough, the Firestarter socks were unpleasant with all the knitting through the back loop, so I switched to another pattern I’d been eyeing. These are Susanne Kitzmann’s Rainbow Socks, from the Oct ’07 MagKnits. The pattern uses show row shaping along the foot and leg to make zig-zagging triangles. This is a great use for self-striping yarn. I’m knitting these toe-up, which may be a little tricky since if your foot length is different than a repeat length, you can’t really cut out in the middle of a short row. I may have to do a little math and rejigger the repeats if the length doesn’t work quite right.
I wasn’t paying very close attention to the pattern for the first short row section, and as a result, the foot actually runs diagonal to the toe at about a five to ten degree angle. Fortunately, yarn stretches, so it’s not really noticeable when it’s on. Once you’ve done one section, it’s easy to remember what to do, so this is a good pattern for keeping a certain amount of your attention without having to refer to a chart. It’s going quickly and I’m really enjoying it.
A reasonably complete map of where the Jayne hats have gone. It doesn’t allow for multiples, so, for instance, if I got ten from Sydney, it only counts once.
Is there a Browncoat near you? I’ll bet there is!
ETA: Dang! You can’t click and zoom like you can on facebook. That was a lot of work for very little payoff! Anybody know another app that’s a little more interactive?
I’ve been knitting like a fiend this weekend. When I say I’ve been working on Jayne hat orders that came in on Jan 6-7, understand that ten orders came in on Jan 6-7. It’s not a one to one ratio, where I always get one order a day. Some days, several will come in. Some days, none will. That just happened to be a busy period because it was the tail end of the Donors Choose challenge.
Busy or not, though, earlier this week I had to set aside Jaynes for just one night. I was over at Turtlegirl76’s the other night, and the knitters there were working on her favorite charity, Hats for Alex. They were all making itty bitty Jayne hats. SQUEEEE!! Too adorable. Busy or not, naturally I wanted to put my own work aside and throw my Jayne hat into the ring. So here it is, a creditable baby Jayne. It’s in Vanna’s Choice acrylic kindly loaned to me by YeaIKnit. Size 8 needles. You could probably go up to size 9, I’m just a loose knitter. No ties on the earflaps to get tangled. The orange is kind of brown, but really, the colors aren’t a bad match considering it’s for a baby hat. The yellow isn’t as lemony as it appears here. This is very inexpensive, machine-washable yarn. It’s acrylic, of course, but it gets the job done. I’d say this would fit a 3 month old. I always prefer to knit big, though, since kids don’t exactly get any smaller. I reckon I can post the pattern if there’s interest and if I can figure out where to put it.
Many thanks to Turtlegirl76’s cat Ripple for modeling. Also, for being slow enough to catch. He may be the old man of the house, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rob him of his dignity from time to time.
Speaking of that Donors Choose challenge, I was dropping Emily off at school last week and the music teacher was on car duty, shepherding kids into the building. She was literally jumping up and down with excitement as she told me the xylophones are being delivered this week. Considering that a few weeks ago the playground was torched, that’s a very positive event.
For those concerned, the burned sections of the playground have been removed and the playground reopened, so apparently it wasn’t a total loss. I don’t know about repairs, but at least the kids can play on it again. Sorry for the blurry quality of the pic, I took it this morning as I was dropping Em off at school, and frankly, it looks weird to take photographs of the school while it’s in session. I always think the teachers are going to call the cops or something.
Emily’s Clara Barton obsession continues. Here she is dressed as Clara Barton, jumping out of a tree with two trash bags (old baby blankets) as parachutes. Naughty, naughty Clara Barton.
Here’s a more modern nursing tale that would have Clara Barton beaming with pride. I guess medical personnel have always been daredevils, whether they’re jumping out of trees or running into gunfire. Great to see folks making women’s history this Women’s History Month.
I’m off to rustle up breakfast and knit some more. Hope y’all have a great day!
Emily got some nice presents for her birthday. She got books, a DVD, and some toys including a Playmobil playset that she’s really enjoying. But the one gift which she’d been specifically asking for for months was a cuckoo clock. I kid you not. The kid really, really wanted a cuckoo clock. And so, now, in her room, direct from China by way of eBay, is this genuine plastic 14″ tall cuckoo clock. She’s thrilled. It plays a recorded cuckooing sound on the hour, once for every hour. She really wanted us to have it continue cuckooing all night, but we said no. “It won’t keep me awake!” she protested. Finally, I said, “well, it might keep us awake!” She slowly grinned and said, “That’s funny.” Yeah, Daddy and I are crazy that way.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when 8am rolled around this morning and that thing started cuckooing eight loooong times. Steve’s going to rig up either a toggle switch or some kind of photovoltaic cell, or possibly both, for it so that we won’t have to deal with this constantly.
But is it worth it for the joy that it brings my little weirdo? Yes.
This morning: knitting, stamping boxes, writing notes, and rustling up more straw. It’s the Jayne stuff that’s knitting-adjacent that slows things down sometimes.
Hats up for: Troup TX, Rock Hill SC, and… unknown. Hm. Guess I better contact that guy.