Harry Potter Knitting

I found this fab group on ravelry, the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup, and it is so much fun! The basic premise is that it's like in the books, you're basically roleplaying that you're at Hogwarts, you get sorted into a house and everything (I'm in Ravenclaw, yay!) Then at the beginning of the month, new classes are posted. The classes are like those in the books, such as Defense Against The Dark Arts etc, and you get given a task along the theme of that class. It's basically a creativity exercise where they give you an idea, and you run with it. Then, when you start and finish your project, you get points for your house, and at the end of the term, hopefully your house will have the most points!

I've had so much fun this month, because it's given me a chance to just let my creativity run free (along Harry Potter themed lines, of course). I participated in 4 of the 6 classes.



This is the first project I created, for the Arithmancy class. The task was to make something that demonstrated the golden ratio. Pentagons do this, with the length of their diagonal being approx 1.6 times the length of the side. So I found a pentagon pattern on ravelry (the Pretty Pentagon Mini-Washcloth by Hallie Madhoun), and started crocheting some to make into a bag. I discovered while doing this that pentagons apparantly do not lie flat when you sew them together, unlike hexagons. That explains why they're not used so often in patterns, at least. And of course, I learned all about the golden ratio, and fibonacci numbers. So it was fun and educational :)



This was my project for Defense Against The Dark Arts. The task was to make something protective. This was protective against the ribbon yarn in my stash (I ripped out a charity shop sweater, not realised that you can't really rip out ribbon yarn without it looking like chewed spaghetti), it's protective for the environment as I won't need plastic bags, and my house is protected from all those plastic bags cluttering it up! The pattern is the Japanese Blossom Handbag by Mimoknits.



This is my version of the Stargate Fair Isle hat by Carol Schoenfelder. This was for Muggle Studies, where we had to make something based on a show that "muggles" would watch on television. I adapted the pattern, basically just used the charts for the zigzags and the stargate address symbols on a basic hat pattern. It's not the prettiest colourwork that I've done, because there's really too much space between some of the strands, but I like it :)




This is my favourite of the projects, I think. It's for the Ancient Runes class, where the task was to knit something monogrammed. I saw the word "runes" though, and went with that. I looked runes up on wikipedia, and found out that medieval runes correspond with the alphabet (more or less), so I picked out my initials, and duplicate stitched them onto a pair of socks knit in ravenclaw coloured yarn. I had to learn how to duplicate stitch for this project, and I absolutely love this technique now! I can totally see much more duplicate stitching in my knitting future! It's almost magical, how you weave the yarn in and out of the stitches, and it looks like the colour has been knitted in :)

This month in the HPKCHC was fun, and it got me back into doing some colourwork, which I'd kind of neglected for a while. The Year of Colour continues!! :D Plus I learned a whole new technique, and a mathmatical theory (I've been boring everyone I know IRL with facts about the golden ratio, and pointing out golden spirals to them!) I totally had to quickly upload my photos today to claim my points though, cos the new classes go up in June. I can't wait to see what they are!!

Many, many FOs!

I've been busy since my last post! I seem to have lost all concentration ability for large projects (must be something to do with spring coming), so I've been making a lot of small things. It's been good, cos I feel much more productive when I finish many small things. I'm sure I'll get back to Stargazer at some point (all it needs is a band round the middle, and sewed up, but I just can't do it!), but till then I guess I'll be trying to get some of the little projects out of my queue (778 items in my ravelry queue now, and it seems to grow every day!)

I'm going to try something new here, and link to my flickr pictures. Blogger takes forever to upload, and since I already have to upload them to flickr for ravelry, there doesn't seem much point in uploading twice. So here goes:



The 3am Cable Hat, by SmarieK. A really fast, fun knit made from some blue wool that I found in the stash.




These are zill mufflers, the pattern came from www.shira.net My dog, and no doubt my neighbours too, get annoyed if I try to practice playing my zills in the house uncovered. Tupac still doesn't like the muffled zills, but it's more of an annoyed not liking, than a terrified running away, which is much better. I made the purple ones first, then realised they are a fantastic project for using up little balls of leftovers. One tiny ball made 3 sets of the green zill mufflers, so I gave some to my friends in my dance class. We're learning zills in both egyptian belly dance and tribal. I also made a bag to keep my zills in:



This is the Jamaica pouch from 101 one skein wonders. I made mine a little smaller by omitting one repeat, as it only needed to be that size to fit my zills in.



This is the Cabled Baglet from 101 designer one skein wonders. I actually used a couple of the books I have! This turned out really well, but the patten in the book is wrong, so if you're going to make it, go to the errata page first. (link takes you to a pdf) I have a whole rant about books and errata, but I'll save it for another day :) You can already see some of it on the project page for this on ravelry. But the bag is nice, and I use it as a project bag for my portable projects.

Lastly, some monkey socks:



This is the pattern I use when I want to try out a new yarn for socks. This yarn is one I got off ebay, Rennie pure wool, a huge 900g cone of it. It's really good for socks, nice and cosy, and washes up soft.

I'm still making some small projects, but I'll put them in another post tomorrow. Linking the pics from flickr is much faster, but this has still been a long post. C u again soon with more FOs!