Nerd Wars 2 Dissertation Finished, Gallery of Hats :D

 

 Back in June (before we went to Japan :) I posted about my big summer project, what they call a dissertation for Nerd Wars 2. My proposal was to make 14 hats, one for each week of Nerd Wars 2, to be donated to relief efforts for the survivors of the March, 2011 earthquake & tsunami in the Touhouku region of Japan. The deadline for my original proposal is August 31st & I'm happy to say that I posted the finished project today. Yay!

 Here's a gallery of the hats I made & some commentary on them:

Hat #1) Yotsuba& Hat. The green Fair Isle hat is themed to the “Yotsuba&” manga. The main character, Yotsuba, is a little girl with green hair who wears it in 4 ponytails, like a 4-leaf-clover (which is also reflected in her name, as Yotsuba means “4 leaves”). The design on the hat could be a 4-leaf clover, & it’s green like her hair. It’s made from Knitpicks Swish DK & my own pattern.

Hat #2) This the “Naruto & His Mom” hat. In chapter 498, “My Mom’s Red Hair”, of the Naruto manga we learn that Naruto’s mom was a redhead & that Naruto’s hair is yellow like his dad’s. This hat, made from KnitPick’s Bare DK superwash merino that I dyed with procion dyes, reflects the colours of their hair, & celebrates their reunion. The pattern is Lion Brand’s crochet earflap hat, & I used an I/9.5.50mm hook.

Hat #3) The Tsubasa Sempai hat, in honour of the character from the manga “Gakuen Alice”. This character is a friend & supporter of the main character, Sakura Mikan, & is most often shown wearing a fun & funky hat. His Alice is the power to manipulate people by using their shadow, & the colours of this hat have a strong light & shadow component as well. In the manga he’s often wearing an earflap hat. This hat was made from Knitpicks Bare superwash DK yarn that I dyed with procion dyes & the above-mentioned earflap hat pattern.

Hat #4) The Kobato hat, named for the title character of the Kobato manga series by CLAMP. Kobato is required to wear a hat at all times & the ones she wears are always very cute, often with flowers, bows, & lace. I designed an earflap hat around a motif from the wonderful book that is an hommage to Kobato’s cute hats. It’s made from Swish DK.

Hat #5) Cardcaptor Sakura Hat, from the manga of the same name, also by CLAMP. Sakura wears lot of hats to co-ordinate with the costumes she wears as she chases down the Clow cards to become the Master of the Clow. This knitted baby hat has a colour scheme that reminds me of Sakura plus a star motif on either side like the hat she’s wearing in the picture. It’s made from Serenity sock weight yarn, & the motif is from onion skin-dyed sock yarn, the pattern is my own design.

Hat #6) I’m calling this one the Ouran Cosplay Hat because it reminds me of the cosplay turbans from the manga Ouran Koko Hosutobu volume 13 (pictured below the hat). It’s the The Antelope Hat (a pattern from Ravelry), which I sized down a bit to make it child-size. It’s made from Woolease for easy care.

Hat #7) Nausicaa Hat. I present the hat inspired by the manga by Hayao Miyazaki himself, Nausicaa. It’s the Aviatrix hat (another Ravelry pattern) made from superwash, sport-weight wool that I dyed myself. Plus I added mittens to match.

Hat #8) Bear Hat. This hat (with little bear ears) is dedicated to the character Bear from the Gakuen Alice Manga. Bear was created by one of the students whose Alice allows him to animate stuffed animals using part of his own soul. Unfortunately, this ability also shortens the life the the user. Bear is first introduced as a recluse living all alone in a cabin in the woods, a violent & non-speaking creature who inspires fear in all of the students. Eventually, the main character of the series (Mikan) makes friends with Bear & learns that he’s violent because he feels terrible about his creator having given up part of his soul to create him. Bear becomes a sympathetic character & eventually makes friends.I made it from Woolease yarn & is my own design.

Hat #9) Shikamaru Hat. This hat was inspired by the character Shikamaru from Naruto. Shikamaru is a classmate of Naruto’s & is acknowledged by all to be a genius. He’s also incredibly lazy, just barely passing his classes instead of aceing them because he’s just too lazy to care. Almost all of the adult ninja in Naruto wear camoflage-type clothing (while the kids tend to wear more colourful clothing), but Shikamaru wears camo from the time you first meet him. This would have been a great baby hat for him :) This was made with Berroco Sox yarn & is also my own pattern.

Hat #10) This is the R2-D2 Hat. I designed it myself, & knitted it from Swish DK, using size 2 & 5 needles. It matches the R2-D2 Mittens (see below) that I made for a Nerd Wars 2 challenge. There is, indeed, a Star Wars comic :)

Hat #11) The Pikachu Hat! It’s crocheted from a book of Japanese Pokemon-themed patterns. Pikachu is a popular Pokemon & is featured in manga, anime, & video games. It’s made from Caron Sheep(ish) yarn.

Hat #12) The Pokeball Hat, from Ravelry. Another Pokemon-themed hat made from Caron Sheep(ish).

Hat #13) The Pu-reen Hat. This is the Pokemon called “Jigglypuff” in English (“pu-reen” means “pudding” :). Made from the Sheep(ish) from the Japanese Pokemon pattern book.

Hat #14) The Rang Hat. Rang is a mouse character from the Korean manwha “One Fine Day”. Rang is one of the cutest mousies ever created. I love this series! It’s made from Woolease yarn & is my own design.

Here are some nerdy statistics from my dissertation: 

* I used 7 different kinds of yarn to made these hats, in 3 different weights: worsted, DK, & fingering.

• I used 11 different patterns, 7 of them from books or other sources, & 5 patterns were my own design. Half of the hats were from my own designs.
• I used 25 different colours of yarn to make these hats :D

 And here are a few more projects that are going (or have gone) to the kids in Touhouku:

 The Twin Spica hat & mitts are already there, sent in June for one of the Nerd Wars 2 Round 1 challenges,

the Bunny mittens, made for another NW2R1 challenge,

The R2-D2 mittens, made for a NW2R2 challenge,

and the Frog Hat, made for a NW2R1 challenge.

I've also decided to make a pair of mittens for each hat, & so far 9 of the hats have mittens:

Which leaves me 6 more pairs of mittens (if you add the Frog Hat ones :).

And here's what I wrote when I posted the finished project, describing the process of making these hats:

I’m really glad that I was able to use lots of different techniques & yarns to make these hats because I never burnt out on hat-making & kept coming up with ideas for more. It was a lot of fun to theme them to different manga characters, especially since I don’t personally know the children who will receive these hats & so I could put happy thoughts of the characters into the hats as I made them :) Also, because I don’t know the children, I tried to keep in mind what kinds of things people in Japan enjoy or would like in the hats. One thing that’s really popular there (particularly with women & children) is anything that’s cute, so I made a lot of hats that are cute & that don’t require much explanation (for example, the R2-D2 hat, because Star Wars is pretty popular there &, of course, the Pokemon hats). Two of the hats were made while I was in Japan this summer & one of them even sparked a conversation with a lady on the train to Kamakura, which was fun. As of right now, I have made 9 pairs of mittens to match the hats. I will make 5 more pairs to add to the package before I send it, since I don’t feel right sending hats without mittens.

While we were visiting Japan we stayed with a friend who has spent the summer counselling earthquake survivors, many of whom who are suffering from PTSD & other anxiety disorders. She said that things there are still pretty bad because, even though they are working very hard to create new housing for all of the people in shelters, it’s not so easy to recreate livelihoods & fill the gaps left by missing family members. The earthquake & tsunami aftermath are also very much in the daily consciousness of the Japanese & we saw quite a few shows on tv while we were there that showed survivors as they struggle to put their lives back together. In Tokyo, every taxi we saw had a bumper sticker that said “Ganbarou Nihon” (“Do Your Best, Japan!”) & I found stickers at a temple that were being sold to fund relief efforts (& bought a few).

These little hats are not going to put make a huge difference, I know. But I hope that their cheerfulness & warmth will brighten the lives of the children who receive them & also the lives of the people who see the kids wearing the hats.

Nerd Wars 2 Dissertation hats- halfway there

In and around preparing to fly to Japan (this Sunday!) I've been trying to get a bit ahead on my Nerd Wars 2 Dissertation hats. I explain a bit more about the Nerd Wars on Ravelry & my dissertation in this post. I've been having fun matching hats with illustrations from manga & vice-versa. For the dissertation I decided to make 14 hats over the summer, one for each week of Nerd Wars 2. The first two hats that I made are posted here & here. I've also decided to make a pair of mittens for each of the dissertation hats, since it only makes sense to send sets. Where I'm sending them is to Knit for Japan, a site set up by a lovely woman, Bernd Kestler, who is studying at the Nihon Vogue knitting school in Yokohama, Japan. After the March 11 earthquake & tsunami in the Touhouko region of Japan, Bernd started collecting hand-made items for the survivors & taking them there. She also teaches knitting in the shelters to help people there pass the time (&, I think, to feel a bit more control over their lives, which is how I feel when I make things). If you follow the Knit for Japan link above you'll find pictured my first donations, the Twin Spica baby hat & mittens, which I made for another Nerd Wars challenge. It was such a thrill to see the picture on her site & know they'd arrived safely! Bernd sent me a lovely message through Ravelry (which is how I found her site), saying that she'd be going back in July & find a baby to give them to.

So here are 5 more of the hats that will be going to Touhouko later this summer:

The Kobato hat, based on the manga character of the same name by CLAMP:

It's a mutation of the Lion Brand earflap hat pattern that I like so much. I looked through the wonderful book of crochet motifs from Japan & found a motif that ended-up with 72 stitches around the edge, which the number of stitches you get after all the top increases. Then I made the rest of the hat from the pattern & added the motifs on the flaps, to get the Kobato effect :) I used KnitPicks Swish DK & an I/9/5.50mm hook.

This is the Tsubasa Sempai hat, for a character in the manga Gakuen Alice.

Tsubasa Sempai is an older-brother figure to the main character in the series, & he wears lots of funky hats. He's wearing an earflap hat in the black & white manga illustration. This is also the Lion Brand hat pattern, using Swish DK from the Bare line that I dyed using procion dyes.

For this little hat I redesigned a newborn hat pattern that I created before Brendan was born & have been using ever since for gifts. The pattern is part of a set of hat, mittens & socks, all using fingering weight sock wool. I made the hat a bit larger, to fit a better range of baby-sized heads, & a little longer, too. I used Deborah Norville's Serenity Sock Weight yarn, with size 0 & 2 needles. I call it the Card Captor Sakura hat, for the character from the series of the same name (also by CLAMP), I made little motifs from onion skin-dyed yarn that match the hat Sakura's wearing in the illustration. The little mittens that I plan to make will have motifs as well.

Next is the Ouran Cosplay hat, which is the Antelope Hat by Kelly McClure, pattern found at ravelry. I found the pattern, which I really liked, then had to spend some time looking for a manga character/illustration to fit it to! I found this illustration from Ouran High School Host Club of the club members cosplaying in turbans with bangles hanging off them. The hat reflects the bangles in the yarn-overs. Whew! I made it from Woolease yarn & size 2&4 needles.

And hat #7 is the Nausicaa hat (& mitten set). Nausicaa, the heroine of this manga by Hayao Miyazaki himself, wears an aviator-style hat with chin strap, like this Avitrix Hat by Justine Turner. This was another case of finding a cute hat that I wanted to make & then having to match it to an illustration, but Nausicaa came to my rescue :) I made it from Bare Swish DK that I dyed with procion dyes.

And there you have it! Half-way to the 14 hats for my dissertation & for Touhouko. This project has been a wonderfully concrete thing I could do while waiting until I could kick into high gear, Japan-trip-wise. I also plan to turn this blog into a travel blog, & I'll be posting pictures & stories from Japan as we travel around & visit friends. Stay tuned!

My Last Two June Nerd Wards 2 Projects Posted!

Hi again! I'm still trying not to think about getting on a plane to Japan 2 weeks from tomorrow (as much as I'm really looking forward to being in Japan :) which has resulted in my last 2 June Nerd Wars 2 projects being finished. Above is the Frog Hat, inspired by this illustration:

It's from the June 2011 LaLa magazine, which is a manga anthology magazine published in Japan. This illustration is from the "Gakuen Babysitter's" manga. So cute!

Mr. Froggy is made from Woolease in forest green. I used my favourite Lion Brand earflap hat pattern & an I/9/5.50mm hook, just like the Naruto & his Mom Hat. I designed the eyes myself & am very pleased by the way they stand up without any support (hooray for firm crocheting :). The embroidery was inspired by the illustration. I made this hat for the 3-D challenge & it will go to Touhouku along with my dissertation hats.

And this scarf (modeled by Brendan) is for the "I See What You Did There" nerd culture challenge, where we made things that reflect a favourite YouTube video. I chose this video:

It's Inoue Orihime from Bleach, by Kubo Tite. Orihime wears 2 hairpins that are not just decorative. They are her "ShunShunRikka" or "Princess Shielding Flowers" (the "hime" part of her name means "princess" in Japanese). They become little fairies that protect her & allow her to heal others, among other cool things.

You can see one of the hairpins here, from the cover of a Bleach manga.

And are the Rikka, from the manga. I decided to make a scarf using a 6-petal flower motif, so I re-engineered the Splashy Flowers Shawl, which was originally a scarf pattern, changing it quite a bit.

You can see the little flower motifs just like Orihime's hairpins. I used KnitPicks Andean Treasure yarn in the colour "Blue Ribbon" (it took about 3 1/2 skeins) & a K/10/6.50mm hook. It's about 95" long & very cushy.

So now I can work along on my dissertation hats for another week, until it's time to pack! My biggest worry is that I'll be in Japan, with variable internet access, when the July challenges are announced :( However, I'll be in Japan... that's not bad at all! 

More Nerd Wars 2 Projects

Hi again! I've been really busy creating & it's a good thing, because otherwise I'd be thinking too much about the fact that we are getting on a plane in 2 1/2 weeks & flying to Japan! Don't get me wrong, I am very, very excited to be going back & seeing friends & eating wonderful food & just being there. But I also get very, very nervous when anticipating travel (particularly traveling halfway across the world!), so it's been a wonderful thing to be working on my Nerd Wars 2 challenges & not thinking too much about the traveling just yet.

For the "An Adage a Day" challenge (make something that illustrates a saying or adage) I chose the Japanese saying "ひゃくぶんはいっけんにしかず" which is very similar to the English "a picture is worth a thousand words". And to illustrate this adage, I made this pair of thumbless baby mittens using the 2-colour knitting technique (aka Fair Isle Knitting) which I learned from the photos in the book "Fox & Geese & Fences" by Robin Hanson. The yarn is KnitPicks superwash merino DK which I dyed using procion fibre-reactive dyes, plus a bit of pink Swish DK for the bunnies. The pattern is my own design.

For the team spirit aspect, the bunnies represent the character Haninozuka Mitsukuni (Honey Sempai) from Ouran KoKo Hosutobu (Ouran High School Host Club) by Hatori Bisco. As you can see in the picture, this character carries a pink bunny around (even though he is a senior in high school!). I found the bunnies charted for embroidery in a Debbie Bliss book, but worked them as Fair Isle instead.

Then there's this little bag, crocheted with KnitPicks Simply Cotton Sport & a size D/3/3.25mm hook. This was for the Team Spirit challenge "There is No I in Team". The challenge is to make something that expresses your feelings for your particular team/fandom. This one took some thinking... & I learned a lot during the research part of it. I settled on making something for a character in one of my favourite manga (& anime) series, Bleach by Kubo Tite. One of my favourite Bleach characters is the 13 Bantai (squadron) Taichou (captain) Ukitake Jyuushirou.

You can see him, with the white hair, in the pictures behind the bag. Along with being a beautiful & elegant man, he is also very wise & kind. He's an amazing warrior, too (he's a shinigami, a defender of the realm of the souls of the dead) in spite of having had a chronic illness (believed to be tuberculosis) most of his long (1000+ years) life. He's often shown drinking tea (when not in battle) & this led me to think about tea/tea ceremony/tea ceremony accoutrements. As I researched tea ceremony I learned about shifuku, which are fancy bags that hold tea utensils & canisters of tea. I combined the idea of shifuku with a design in Kumiko Sudo's book "Omiyage" for a sewn kusadama (traditional flower ball decoration, often made from origami) bag that is suitable for tea utensils.

I chose the "Granny Pentagon" motif from Heather Lodinsky's "150 Knit & Crochet Motifs" because, when made in the colour combo I chose, it looks like little, 5-petaled sakura blossoms. The white reflects Ukitake's white hair & Taichou Haori (kimono jacket), which is white & lined in the reddish-brown colour at the top of the bag. I really like the way it turned out! I think I'm going to make another one in a slighly different colour scheme for a friend in Japan whose birthday we'll be celebrating while we're there...

I also finished hat number 2 for my dissertation project, shown above modeled by Yoda :)

I'm calling it the "Naruto & his Mom Hat". In chapter 498 of the Naruto manga, we finally meet Naruto's mom (who died not long after he was born). The chapter is entitled "My Mom's Red Hair".  Naruto's hair is yellow, like his dad. This hat combines the yellow & red of their hair & celebrates their reunion- even if it was in Naruto's mind/soul. It was very satisfying to finally learn the back-story of Naruto's parents, who made the ultimate sacrifice so that their son (& everyone in the whole village) could live. I dyed this yarn also, using the KnitPicks superwash merino DK & procion dyes. I crocheted it using an I/9/5.50mm hook & Lion Brand's crochet earflap hat pattern (one of my favourites).

So, thank you Nerd Wars 2! You are providing me with great distraction when I really need it, the opportunity to learn things I might not have otherwise have learned, & a great sense of accomplishment, as 4 out of the 6 June challenges are done!! 

Spiral Motif String Bag

Hello! This may look familiar, since I posted a similar string bag a couple of weeks ago, but this one is leaner & meaner (um, not really) & has been written up as my third free pattern posted on Ravelry. Yay!

I'm very pleased to finally get this pattern uploaded because there were some nice comments on the flower motif bag pattern and I wanted to make the spiral one available, too. Since I'd already made a spiral motif bag I thought it might go quickly. But I had to modify the spiral motif (pg. 74 in the Harmony Guide's crochet stitch motifs) because it was a bit too big, so I ended up making another bag & rewriting as I crocheted.

I used KnitPick's CotLin again which is dk weight, using Coffee colour this time, and a size F/5/3.75mm hook. It took just under 2 skeins to make the ~22" long bag. I like how it turned out, & at the rate I'm making string bags, I'm getting a head start on Christmas gifts :) 

Crochet Flower Motif String Bag

I just got done uploading my second pattern over at Ravelry, the Crochet Flower Motif String Bag. I'm really excited about finally getting some of the patterns I've designed available online. Both this one & my first, (the Shell Crochet tea Cozy) are available for free as pdf downloads from Ravelry.

As you can see, it's your basic string bag (about 22" long from handles to bottom) but it has a pretty motif on the bottom. I blogged my first motif-bottom string bag a few weeks ago, & decided to make another one & write the pattern as I went. I used the Harmony Guide- Crochet Stitch Motifs again for the motif, the flower hexagon on pg. 54, which I adapted slightly for the bag. I used KnitPicks CotLin, which is a sport weight, cotton & linen blend, & a size F/5/3.75mm hook. The motif string bag that I made previously was based on a Red Heart company pattern, but this one is my own design because I liked the idea of a simpler top & handles for the bag. It also takes less yarn to make than the Red Heart pattern, but the bag is the same size. Go fig...

I like the way it turned out. I plan to make a pattern for the swirl one from the earlier blog post soon...

String Bags

During the recent Guild Wars 2 at Ravelry's Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild there were a bunch of string bags made (for the challenge to make things for a witch's kitchen). I was intrigued & hadn't crocheted one before, so followed the link from one I liked to this pattern. The yarn the pattern calls for, Red Heart Eco Cotton Blend, is considered a size 4 (worsted weight) yarn, but the thought of crocheting a string bag with such heavy yarn did not appeal to me, so I decided to try DK weight yarn instead. I used KnitPicks CotLin for my first bag, & since I only had 2 skeins, I fudged the pattern a bit so I wouldn't run out. I used a size E/4/3/5mm hook which gave a good fabric- not too loose, but not too firm either. The brown bag in the picture came out about 10" long (excluding the handles) which is a very nice, usable size. Along with making the mesh part of the bag shorter (by about 5 rounds), I also made the top edging much briefer than the pattern calls for, working just 3 rounds before making the handles.  I made the handles from regular single-crochet rows, rather than the firmer (but yarn-eating) stitch they recommended. I think it's perfectly sturdy this way, & I like it so well that I decided to make another one.

As you can see at the bottom of the brown bag, it starts with a medallion made of single crochets. It occurred to me that you could substitute one of those lace motifs that end with a mesh for the medallion, so I looked through my trusty Harmony Guide of crochet stitch motifs & decided to try the Spiral Pentgram motif found on page 74.

I used another DK weight yarn, Elann.com's Cotone Lin limited edition, with the same size hook as the first bag. As you can see, the motif came out really nicely at the bottom of the bag.

It's about the same size in length as the first bag, although it's actually a bit bigger around (I ended-up with 35 chain spaces in the mesh, rather than 32 (as in the original pattern), but it was easy to work the top edging & handles based on the original pattern. There are a few more motifs in the book that end up with a mesh, so I'm looking forward to trying them, too. I have knitted string bag in my UFO pile, & it just may become another crocheted string bag! They work up so quickly, look nice, & are very useful (& good for gifts).