Swatchless

This post is written while laundry dries all over my living room.  What a muddle.  My perfectly timed 8:00 PM laundry run was  more complicated than necessary–all of the machines were full (for the first time in my laundry history), and after waiting for 15 minutes I hijacked a washing machine that finished its cycle–I got my wash started in time (my building’s laundry room closes at 10PM)–but when it came time to dry it all, there was only one machine that was empty.

With my fingers crossed, I loaded 2 washing machines worth of clothes into one dryer–the one dryer that is missing a lint trap filter–but my money was already in by the time I realized that.  Needless to say, an hour later, I was faced with an oversized load of damp laundry which is currently drying in my living room.

In any case, I’m giving up on the laundry now, and focusing on my mitten in progress.  It’s my usual pattern, Fox and Geese from the book “Fox and Geese and Fences, a Collection of Traditional Maine Mittens” by Robin Hansen, and the yarn is from Topsy Farms on Amherst Island.  The pattern makes very sturdy mittens with long cuffs which I love.

Somehow now that it’s almost November it seems appropriate to be starting on mittens again.

This is my latest knitting project.  It is the hurricane hat, a nice quick knit with intuitive easy to follow instructions.  I knit it out of Cascade Ecological Wool, on 4.5mm needles with a 90 st. cast on.

It was very important that this hat be finished in time for Thanksgiving, because part of our crazy family tradition includes a swim in the lake.

This year, thankfully, the sun was shining and the water was a balmy 12 C, which encouraged us to actually swim.  Sometimes if it is really really cold on Thanksgiving we get in the very shallow water and lay down and call that a “swim”.  On some memorable occasions people have been known to don ski jackets and ancient fur coats and tiptoe through dustings of snow to take a dip.  My grandmother, who recently celebrated her 96th birthday, has graduated from swimmer to “lifeguard” on such family occasions, and enjoys (from a safe distance) how we youngsters carry on her ridiculous swimming traditions.

Sometimes along with all of us cousins and uncles and aunts, friends come to join in with our family celebrations–the brave ones take part in the swimming traditions along with us.  This hurricane hat was finished in time to warm up a very chilled swimmer!

After swimming, we enjoyed a turkey dinner with all the fixings, followed by pumpkin pie and lots of good conversation.  My next project took shape over the course of the afternoon–a pair of fox and geese mittens–the first of this season.  I have to keep reminding myself that it is indeed fall, and that the temperature will likely plummet any day now, and someone will certainly appreciate a new pair of mittens!

What a great day!  So many things to be thankful for–good weather, good friends, good food, health, peace and lots and lots of yarn!

What are you thankful for?

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!