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Knit and Crochet Blog Week Day 2

Day Two:  A Mascot Project.
Your task today is to either think of or research a project that embodies that house/animal. It could be a knitting or crochet pattern – either of the animal itself or something that makes you think of the qualities of that house. Alternatively it could be a type or color of yarn, or a single button. Whatever you choose, decide upon a project and blog about how and why it relates to your house/creature. You do not have to make this project! It is simply an exercise in blogging about how you come to decide upon what projects to make. Try to blog about the journey which inspiration and investigating patterns, yarns, stitches, (etc) can often guide you through. You may wish to make a collage or 'mood board' to present several ideas, or even sketch out your own design.


     I play Nerd Wars, which my regular readers all know, so I often have to find projects based on some open but usually vague parameters.  I always start with my queue.  I have my actual Ravelry Queue, where I keep everything nice and organized virtually and then my mental "what I need to do" queue.  I knit for other people, mostly friends and some family.  When they ask me to make something I usually churn it out in a timely fashion, but not always.  I like to fit these projects into Nerd Wars, it's sort of killing two birds with one stone.  If I'm free to make the decisions regarding what I'll be making next, I still always start with my Ravelry Queue and see what jumps out at me based on the challenge parameters.  So in this case, lets start with the attributes of these animals.  The bee is a small insect that flies around.  It is attracted to brightly colored flowers and lives in a hive with other bees.  So lets break it down further into pattern ideas.
-Small size
-Wings
-Colors; black and yellow for the bee itself, bright colors for the flowers it visits
-Flower stitch patterns
-Honeycomb stitch patterns for the hive it lives in
-Sets (of items) for the worker bees that all work together in a hive
-I have to throw this in, since I play for Team Stargate in Nerd Wars.  The Wraith live in Hives that operate much like a bee hive, if this was a Nerd Wars prompt I would tie my project into the challenge with some info about the Wraith from SG:  Atlantis. 

Monkeys also live together in groups.  They are intelligent, with the capacity to learn and be taught.  Most of them live on the ground and in trees.  They have prehensile tails that serve essentially as a third arm.  Many species are used in scientific study, most notably Rhesus monkeys.  Random medical tidbit here; the "Rh" portion of a blood type actually stands for Rhesus since the blood group D was originally found in Rhesus monkeys, then humans later upon comparison.  So again lets break this down further.
-A set or group of something since they live in groups
-A project that would be a new technique for me, something I would have to learn
-Leaves or leaf stitch patterns to represent the trees they live in
-A tail cozy, or pattern that has fringe (or something like fringe) to represent a tail
-A red blood cell to represent the medical info I just described.  (The antibody that makes you either Rh Pos or Rh Neg is adhered to the surface of the RBC, so this is actually fitting.)

     I like multi-layered projects myself.  I think its because I tend to over think things and then they become rather complex.  So, if I were to actually pick a project I would make sure to pick one project that would fulfill both these animals.  So why don't I actually pick a project.  I'm leaning toward a stitch pattern that looks like both flowers and leaves, or has both in it.  So several patterns come to mind:


Something Lacy Shrug

Vinelle
Burnished Leaves 
Spring Time Dishrag
The shrug is at the top of my queue and I even have yarn picked out for it, but the dishcloth would fit into one of the current Nerd Wars challenges and a KAL group I'm a part of, so I'll probably do the dishcloth, if I can get it done in April...  As I was looking through my queue again, I found even more patterns that would work for this concept and for a couple of the others I narrowed down.  Here is the one that made me think of monkey tails:

Coolest Scarf Ever 

One of these days I'll get around to this one. 

Happy Crafting!
-Q

Comments

  1. I'm intrigued by Nerd Wars. Is that a ravelry group? I'm really enjoying reading all about people's thought processes today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Nerd Wars is a group on Rav. We're coming to the end of the current tournament, so come check it out. It can be really fun.

      Delete

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