Swatchless

Ever since knitting a hat for Woodie Flowers at the New York City Regional competition, I’ve been thinking about what would make a good hat for Dean Kamen.

People had mentioned that he wouldn’t wear it unless it matched with his denim ensemble.  The FIRST logo is very important to him, so that was incorporated, as was his name, and of course lots of robots!

During the competition, one of our mentors wore a hole in her jeans, and we sacrificed them for the cause.  The jeans were cut lengthwise in strips about 1/4 inch wide (any thinner and the fabric will fray too much, any thicker and it will not knit properly).  The denim strips are in the stripes at the top of the hat.

Knitting the hat was the easy part.  Finding Dean Kamen on the last day of Championships proved to be much more challenging.  After the final matches on Einstein, I headed out with another mentor in search of him.  We were lucky to meet Monica, a woman who works at FIRST in New Hampshire.  She told us that Dean had already left the building, but that she would pack up the hat and card, and be sure that he got them.

Thanks Monica!  We appreciate your helpful delivery.  We’re hoping that Dean will wear the hat, and take a photo to send to us, but we realize he’s a busy guy.

To see more of what we did at our competition, and to see the FIRST build season in a nutshell tune in to CNN, they’re airing a special about education and how special FIRST is.

Heading to St. Louis (19 hours on a bus) was great for sleeping and knitting.  The weather was stormy, and it was hard to see the arch as we approached.

This hat, number 50 was intended for Morgan Freeman…but we never ended up seeing him or hearing him at the competition.  Hat 50 will be repurposed for someone else sometime soon.

Hat 51 was created in the stands at the World Championships.We had an exciting time playing with and against the best robots in the world.  We met some of our old friends, and made new ones.

It turns out that several teams knit hats!  I’d like to think ours are the most unique out there, but I challenge all other teams to engineer creative hats for themselves.

We saw ASIMO the robot from Honda that can climb stairs, run, walk, and stand on one foot (as seen above).  It was such a great demonstration of highly skilled engineering and design.

Captain Canada and I had a walk and saw the arch in the sunshine…. and later in the trip we all were treated to a concert by the Black Eyed Peas.

It was an exciting time for all of us!

Before I knew it, hat 51 was complete!  The needles didn’t sit idle for long.  A hat for Dean Kamen was the next on the agenda.

While with the K-Botics team at the Greater Toronto Regional competition, hats 48 and 49 took shape.

Hat 48 did a number on my circulars–the cord snapped right off at the needle!  It’s a good thing I brought a back up pair!

The competition was the 10th anniversary of FIRST robotics in Canada.  It was really exciting to compete, and even more thrilling to win the Engineering Inspiration award which qualified us to compete at the World Championships in St. Louis.

Knitting has really caught on at robotics competitions–with our team at least.  At one point there were 4 or 5 of us knitting and cheering in the stands.

As the end of March approaches, my hat total is getting closer and closer to 50.  This is hat #47, knit for a boy who skateboards and has long hair.  He wanted a hat that would droop, and hopefully this one fits the bill.

What he doesn’t yet know is that the robot and team number glow in the dark!  K-Botics is getting ready for another competition next weekend.  I’m packing up my knitting needles and robotics yarn stash, and aiming for 50.

Last week, in New York with K-Botics, we met a man named Woodie Flowers.  He’s an important founding member and mentor for the FIRST robotics organization.  He models “G.P” (gracious professionalism) in his interactions and encouragement for our teams.  He asked us all to sign his shirt, and he chatted with us about our team and our robot for a while.  I had thought it would be fun to make him a hat, so we asked if that would be ok.  He got out his iPhone and used the caliper tool to measure out how big his ponytail is so we’d know how big a hole to put in the hat.  What a guy!

I knit through most of the day, and ended up with a hat by the end of it!

It had GP on the back by the ponytail hole, and Woodie written across the front.

We wrote him a thank you card for being such a good example for us.

I think he was pleased to get his new hat…

What do you think?

Yarn!  It’s great for knitting hats….here’s hat #45 (2nd one this weekend)

Our robot needed some rope to pull a part loose and deploy our minibot.  We took turns making a braided rope (similar to making friendship bracelets).  It’s cool that our team yarn ended up on our robot.

The yarn was also great for games of cats cradle that kept breaking out while waiting for something to happen…

Before long there were cats cradle games in the stands too!

So be sure, when you are packing for a competition, bring along a little yarn for you and your friends.

This past weekend I was with the K-Botics team in New York City to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition.  It’s been a busy 8 weeks preparing a robot and fine tuning our team and strategy for competition.  There were ups and downs along the road but it’s all worth it when you get to competition and catch the excitement! 

Part of my job as a supervisor is to help out in the stands while others work on the robot in the pit area.  The stands are full of kids, cheering and scouting the robots as they play.  I generally bring my knitting along with me and see how many hats I can make in a weekend.  Almost everyone on the team has a hat…but this hat, hat #44 is special.  It’s not for our team.  It’s for a member of FIRST team 694, Team Stuypulse from Manhattan New York who very graciously offered to have some of our recent material order shipped to their address because it would take too long to get to Canada.  We appreciate the extra effort extended by this team, and so, to say thanks, I knit them one of our hats (in their colours).

Their logo is one of the cutest I’ve seen.  Of course we signed our thank you gift.  And I very stealthily took pictures of it being worn during practice day-a very intense day where everyone gets a lay of the land, sets up their pit area, gets their robots to pass inspection, and connect to the field.  Some robots work right away, and others take a lot longer to become functional.  Strategy gets discussed, and scouting begins.  It’s the start of a busy weekend.

We spent the rest of the competition cheering in the stands right in front of Team 694.  They are an enthusiastic group who brought vuvuzelas!  They also brought us cookies–We LOVED the cookies.  It’s great that even though we were rivals in the matches, we were friends in the stands.

What else would I be doing now that robot building season is done?  Of course I took a road trip to watch a robotics competition, and brought along my knitting!

I was lucky to be a passenger, so I had lots of time to knit.  That much knitting represents Kingston to Burlington.

It got finished during the VEX robotics competition in St. Catharine’s…and I had time to start another hat while I watched the robots battle each other for control of the stacks of rings.  It’s impressive what high school kids can do!

On the way back home today, hat 43 got finished.  It is topped off with i-cord and pompoms, and glow in the dark embroidered robot and team number.

Slowly but surely our team will be outfitted with the coolest hats in town.  We compete in New York City in 12 days.  There’s lots of knitting to be done between now and then.  There’s lots of robotic preparations to do to.  Looks like we’ll be busy for another few weeks!

This past week has been a whirlwind.  I got a chance to knit on Thursday while in the car for an extended period of time.  This is the result!

Today the glow in the dark wired icord and pompom were added to finish off this hat.  It’s a fun one since the pompom bounces from side to side when the owner bounces…and believe me, he’s a live wire!

We’re spending the weekend at robotics, in a warehouse.  It’s cold in there, so hats are a great addition!

Here’s another hat…I didn’t knit this one, but I did add the ears!  The ears are wired icord so they can be horns, or ears, or heart shapes, or anything else!

A great excuse to get back to knitting!  A long time friend of mine is having a baby pretty soon, and I was thrilled to get an invitation to her baby shower.  Since nobody knows if the little one will be a boy or a girl, neutral coloured clothing was requested.

I’m not really sure if rainbow and blue count as neutral, but I sure think it is cute!

The blue acrylic is left over from the secret santa mittens I knit, and the rainbow superwash wool is from my excellent score at value village.

The hat is my favourite baby bonnet pattern (Top Down Bonnet with Anime Character), and the wee baby booties are a version of Saartje’s booties written for seamless construction and published on Fleegle’s Blog.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the new little baby wearing these bright happy colours!  Best wishes to the mom-to-be.