Swatchless

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!

Finished this weekend:  HAT 40

Hat 41 has been started, but progress is slow since most of my time outside of working hours is spent helping with the robotics team.

30 minutes to design and build a ball winder from scratch….possible?  NO!  well…not yet at least.

A friend at robotics decided to get a group of students to work really fast and gave them this challenge to solve.  After brainstorming a bit they decided that a ball winder could be made in 30 minutes.

Step 1: draw lots of ideas on a chalkboard.

Step 2: commandeer a cutting tool and make circles.

Step 3: mount the circles on an axle.

Step 4: Attach a slanted piece and give it a try!

Verdict:  a very good attempt for a 30 minute design process.

But it doesn’t wind a center pull ball.

Prototype #2 will be worked on at a later date I’m sure.  I have some very creative and persistent engineering friends, and they have lots of eager helpers.

So….this past weekend was the kick off for robotics build season.  It turns out that I’m putting in over 40 hours this week in robotics mentoring, so the knitting time is seriously limited.  I did start hat 40 one evening while at a mentor meeting, discussing robot designs and competition rules.

I did a little bit more over dinner (yes…with another robotics mentor)

To see robotics progress check here.

As Kick-Off for the robotics season nears, I devised a way to keep track of safety glasses and to keep them from getting scratched while not being worn.  Here’s my Christmas gift to K-Botics–a safety glasses protection unit!

I managed to find remnants of fleece and other soft fabrics on sale at Fabricland, which combined nicely with a donated piece of purple fleece to make this safety glasses holder.

I hadn’t sewn fleece before on a large scale, and I’m still surprised at how much stretch there is in the material.  Stretch is important because safety glasses are not flat!  It’s not as neat as I’d originally hoped, but it is complete, and will serve a purpose well for our team.

There are 42 pockets on this wall hanging.  Pocket dimensions are approximately 6 inches deep, and 5.5 inches across.

Step 1: cut out fabric strips 6.5 inches wide and hem them on one side (1/4 inch)

Step 2: sew a casing at the top that will fit the size/length of dowel that you have.

Step 3: sew on one strip at a time, arrange it with right sides together, so it will fold up covering the seam.  It gets bulky working with such large pieces.

Step 4: measure and pin the pocket seams.  Leave an extra 1/2 inch on each side for side seams.  Sew the pocket seams (save the exterior ones for the very end of the project)

Step 5: after all pockets are sewn, hem around the entire wall hanging-this will finish off the exterior pocket seams.

The dowel will be put through the casing, and be tied with a cord which will be suspended from a hook on the wall, once we figure out how to drill a hole in the cement wall that is!

Don’t you miss snow days?  Remember when you were a kid, and the snow started to fall, and you just KNEW that school busses would be cancelled, and you could stay home and build a fort or have a snow fight and then sit and drink hot cocoa with gooey marshmallows floating on top?

Snow is falling, but there’s no snow day.  Life and work and responsibilities continue…and so to does the parade of hats!

This hat is special because part of it is made with sparkly yarn.  This is a great stash busting hat.  It has randomly assorted two-row stripes of many different colours of blue/purple  yarn.

This hat has robots that are worked in stripes.  When using this type of colourwork, it is important to have a background colour that contrasts really well with the foreground colour.  I made sure that if the background was light purple, the robot would be dark blue.  The robots are more subtle on this hat, but the colours are really pretty.

This hat was a fun one to create.  I had been looking at a stitch dictionary, and got inspired!

The bows are rather tedious to make!  I worked one row of (K1, wrap 3) around.  The next row I knit the stitches that were originally knit, and removed the wrapped stitches.  I tied the loopy fringey bits together to make these little bows.

The ruffle was made by knitting 3 then casting on 6 stitches all the way around.  After knitting 4 (really long) rounds, I knit 3 then cast off 6 all the way around.  This creates pocket like holes in the hat.  I think they might be the right size to hold useful things like pencils or small screwdrivers.  We’ll have to try out that theory later!

The bobbles were made by increasing 3 stitches in one stitch, turning purling the 3 stitches, turning, increasing in each of the 3 stitches, turning purling all 6 stitches, turning, knitting 2 together across the 6 stitches, turning, purling 3 stitches together, turning, continuing with knitting the row…I worked a bobble with 3 or 4 stitches between.

The fringe was worked in the same K1, wrap 3 method as I did for the little bows.  To keep the fringe hanging loosely, and not just stretching to become a really loosely knit row, I ended up knitting the fringe stitch along with a stitch the row or two below.

The flower at the top was worked as an icord of 2 stitches.  I worked about 3 inches of icord, then knit it together with the next stitches, all around the hat.  I will use this technique again for sure.  I really like the effect.

I don’t know many people that could wear a hat with ALL of these special features on it.  I know that the recipient has enough team spirit and self confidence to make it one of the coolest hats on the team.

As the snow keeps falling, I keep knitting, and wishing for a day that I could avoid responsibilities and schedules, throw a few snowballs and curl up with a mug of cocoa and my knitting, and watch the snow pile up outside.

This hat was knit using bits and pieces of all of the colours in our collection.  It’s topped off with little bobbles that are easy to knit.

Cast on 4 sts, knit in round

Round 1: Kfb in each stitch [8 sts]

Round 2:  Kfb in each stitch [16 sts]

Round 3: K each stitch

Round 4: K2tog around [8 sts]

Round 5: K2tog around [4 sts]

Round 6: K2tog around [2 sts]

knit a 2 stitch i-cord as long as desired.  Join to corners of hat.

And in other robotic knitting news….We received a donation today of 70 balls of yarn for future hat knitting projects.  Thanks very much to Anne at Wool-Tyme Kingston for the generous donation.  We appreciate your support!

Hat number one was cast on while riding the bus to Ottawa.  Knitting and bus rides are a no-brainer for me, and this fall, it seems like I’m only knitting robots!  This is the beginning of hat number 34 for K-Botics.

This hat is unique in that the robots are not all the same colours.  I attempted to work 3 colours in each row without tangling everything into a giant knot.  It’s a challenge….and I don’t know that I’d do it again.  Another issue is that with carrying colours behind the work all the time, you have to really be careful that the hat doesn’t get too tight.  I think that this one worked out alright.  It fits my head anyway.

The hat enjoyed a visit to the Canadian Currency Museum.  It’s free, and really really cool!  I recommend going next time you are in Ottawa.  The hat and I were both surprised to see a $7 bill.

The next stop was lunch and a tour of the Rideau Center and the Byward Market.  The hat got bigger over lunch, and was finished while watching a game of “cut the rope” on the i-pads at the apple store.

The hat made some friends at the market.  Someone tried to sell me a hat for $20 dollars….they said it was hand made.  I showed them my hat.  The sales man couldn’t believe that I could make a hat.  He wanted to see my tools.  I showed him the needles, but I don’t know if he was impressed or not.  He stopped trying to sell me the hat, and let me take pictures.  I tried to explain my blog, but I don’t know if he understood.

There were really cute mittens there too.  I think they can double as puppets.  A neat idea!

Back on the bus again, and I wasn’t the only one knitting.  Here’s a guy from the K-Botics team who has taught himself how to make robot hats.  What a kid.  He’s wearing one of the hats I made last year.

We were on the road again, headed for Carp Ontario, home of the Diefenbunker.  My hands were idle, and before I knew it, I had cast on for another hat.

the bomb is a replica

I knit on the sly during the tour, but was so caught up with the information being delivered that I totally forgot to take any pictures.  Coming out of the bunker, I tried, but the lighting was weird.

Pictures didn’t really turn out until I got outside again.  This hat is striped with bits and pieces of blue and purple.  It’s going to have some finishing touches added later.

The hat was finished on the bus ride home, but since I don’t travel with a bodkin with me, the embroidery will have to be completed later.  I love how every new hat is my favourite until the next one is finished!  Here’s hat number 34.

And here’s hat number 35.

looks different in daylight. I love the stripes!

I have even cast on for hat #36.  I don’t know when this obsession will end!