terriko

As many of you know, I've been working on a pattern for making pones based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I finally sat down and stuck the pattern and the pictures together, so now you can all make ponies! And best of all, the pattern is free! (This is mostly 'cause I'm that kind of person, but it is complex for me to sell anything due to the conditions of my work visa here in the US. Which is to say please don't ask me if I can sell you a finished pony; I can't.)

The pattern as a pretty printable PDF
The pattern in HTML
The pattern on Ravelry
The pattern on DeviantArt (No good reason for this except that there's lots of bronies there and I might as well share where the community is!)

And to remind you, here's what you'd be making:







More photos here.

I'm really nervous about this because it's the most complex pattern I've ever posted online and because I know other people really want it. I hope people enjoy it!

The scarf is finished and gifted! As I said in the first post, I wanted to make the scarf for Ken because he's the one who's really carried me through the new seasons of Doctor Who with his enthusiasm, even when my faith in the writers often flagged.

I hope Ken enjoys it. I'm sad I didn't manage a better photo of him -- he's usually quite photogenic when I don't mess up the focus on my camera! It's soft and warm, so at least it'll do its job as a scarf. He agreed with my choice to prioritize softness over perfect colour matching, of course. Turns out Ken hasn't watched much of the old Doctor Who, though, so now he feels like maybe he should.

Quite a few other people have recognized and liked it, at least, including my mother. Tom Baker is the doctor that I remember watching sometimes as a kid 'cause he was the one my parents liked, so no surprise that she thought this was fun (if a little crazy). And of course John wants one too, but I think he should learn to knit one himself! He's good at this sort of thing and I like the idea of him messing with people's heads when they ask, "Oh, did Terri make that for you?" and he can say, "No, I did it myself!"

The best story I heard was from my friend Andrew, whose sister-in-law asked if she could knit him anything for Christmas and he said "a doctor who scarf" and she said ok without knowing what that was. When she found out, she had to retract the offer and told him he was getting gloves or something else manageable!


I say the scarf is finished because I've given it away, but if you look at the picture you can tell I only got this far in the scarf pattern:



Just over 70%, or I think around 8 feet long? I forgot to measure it. Obviously long enough for usual scarfy purposes. It's also slightly less wide than the pattern calls for because I thought it was hilarious if it was 42 stitches wide. If I were doing one for myself I think I might make it even less wide, although I *did* appreciate being able to use it as a blanket while I was knitting on the plane. ;)

I keep saying it took me around 3 weeks, but looking through my journal it turns out I started on Mar 22, so it's actually been closer to 2 weeks. 2 weeks + 2 days in fact. This was helped by the fact that I can knit at work during seminars, colloquia and other meetings (an extra 5-8 hours of knitting at work per week), but I also spent a lot more time than usual listening to audiobooks, the radio, podcasts, and even watching TV. It was fun -- often I get so bored/fidgety when i try to watch TV that I'll wind up doing things like getting up and cleaning just to avoid staying still (which is why I usually prefer audio-only media and am so hooked on the radio) but the knitting kept me busy enough that I could actually enjoy TV on my own while John was off at collab summit. I'm pretty impressed with myself regardless.

I'm most definitely not taking orders for any more dr who scarves anytime soon, but I might consider doing it again sometime just so I can say that I made a complete one. Right now, I'm trying to lay off the knitting for a bit I work on wrangling mentors and student applications for Google Summer of Code, but I'm finding that I've gotten so used to having my hands busy all the time that I'm craving a new project. Perhaps a smaller one this time, though!

I decided I wanted to upgrade my flash drive and there was no reason it shouldn't be pretty, so I bought this 16G USB Flash Drive off Amazon.

It's so very shiny that when I opened it up, I decided that rather than just stuffing it into my purse, I should use it as a pendant. A few minutes, some jewelry wire, pliers, and a necklace wire I had on hand, and here it is:




I'm inordinately pleased with myself. :)