If wishes were fishes

Fun with crochet!

My friend said, "Rachel! You made this? Your skills are being wasted."
I said, "This is the perfect use of my crochet skills, actually."

• Pattern (which I mostly ignored).
• How to make a gif using photoshop.

Bread on the inside

I knit a hat. It's squishy and blue and has a pompom. 

Recognise the shape? It's a tardis! I used this pattern, and found it very good. 

Recognise the bread? It's a baby hat. (More on baby-bread here.) 

I gave it to Jenn and Zac. They liked it! 

Jenn told the crowd, "This is actually the second Doctor Who themed item Rachel's knit for us. She also knit this cardigan, with a scarf knit right in."

It was a Doctor Who themed baby shower, of course. 

Baby showers are kind of odd things, aren't they? I always think it's wonderful to gather the community, and help give new parents the things they might need, but they have kind of a staged effect, the pantomime quality which comes from collecting strangers together. "You know," I said to someone I went to high school with, "I don't think I know anyone else here." 

"I was just thinking the same!" She said, "It's so strange - I know Jenn so well, and yet - " she gestured to the crowd. 

And there was a crowd, which was wonderful to see, all the people who care deeply about this child, and are looking forward to welcoming it into this world. 

It was wonderful to see the children at the party as well, and know the child is coming into a community where young ones are valued and loved. 

Need help with your knitting? Ask @YarnBot

@YarnBot is a Twitter bot who just wants to talk about knitting and crochet.

3D Printing - the future arrived and we didn't even notice

3D printing isn't futuristic. It's here.

In case you've somehow missed it, 3D printing is

...a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes.

Layers of molten plastic are laid down over one another, to form more or less any shape. It reminds me of crochet: once you have a foundation chain, you can move in just about any direction, but you're always building a layer on top of the one below it.

If you have the time and inclination, you can 3D print a kayak, a human skull, a ukulele, or a house. You couldn't crochet those things.

You can also print another printer.

3D printers can already self replicate. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a printer.
— Rachel Rayner (@RachelRayner) March 31, 2014

Most printers print in plastic, but you can also get ones that print metal - or even food.

If you're in Auckland, you can head along to the Central Library, and try out their 3D printer. (Yeah, the library has a printer.) I did today.

I downloaded the files I was interested in from Thingiverse, and the team at the library popped them on to their computer, and started the machine printing.

The printer bed is a sheet of glass, which is prepared by slathering it with Pritt Stick. Apparently, it has to be Pritt Stick, not just your generic glue stick.

The printer head shifts back and forth, building up the layers. It's surprisingly musical, especially the circles.

Turn your volume way up if you can't hear that. "Every 3D printer sings a different song," I was told.

I printed a feather:

It took about five minutes: that's only about two layers of printing.

If I had a 3D printer of my very own, this is what I'd use it for: new necklace and earrings every morning. I've been looking at examples of 3D printing, and in my opinion, the most interesting and sculptural interpretations of the medium have been in jewellery design. 

Follow Rachel Rayner's board 3D Printing on Pinterest.

Let's be practical though. I also printed a bottle opener.

That bottle opener promises it's for an "Australian coin," but a New Zealand ten cent piece fits perfectly. It took about an hour to print.

It needs the coin, because the 3D printed material is on the soft side. 

It's biodegradable, so I can compost it when I'm done. It's the same stuff that's used to hold in the insides of capsules and pills, apparently: I'm sure my vitamin tablets are covered with the same stuff.

How much did this all cost me? A grand total of seventy cents. Auckland Libraries charges ten cents per gram to print. They have a bunch of different colours you can print with, and you can just wander up to the MakerSpace during their advertised hours, and they'll help you print just about anything.

I'd love to see 3D printers become household items, but they're not quite at that stage yet. They're fiddly, and kind of expensive to buy. 

Still, 3D printing's really cool, and if you've got the chance, I'd encourage you to have a play with a machine. 

If you're interested in 3D printing in Auckland, or New Zealand, check out these links: 

• Makerspace at Auckland Library
• Replicator, the open source software used at Auckland Library
• Thingiverse, where all the patterns are, including the two I printed
• Mindkits, which will sell you a 3D printer of your very own
• Vivenda, a 3D Printing and Design consultancy in Auckland. The founder and owner also designed the feather I printed.

Who Will I Be? - Doctor Who Inspired Baby Knitting

The thing about babies is they're not anything yet. I know - what a ridiculous thing to say, but at the beginning, they're nothing by a clump of cells and their parents' hopes and dreams. 

My friend Jenn is expecting. (You've met Jenn here, and here, and here.) She and her husband are massive Doctor Who fans - they're planning a Doctor Who themed nursery, and even did a Doctor Who baby annoucement!  

Of course I had to knit a jumper. 

Do you get it?

How about now?

Confession time: I've never seen a single episode of Doctor Who, so I asked a couple of self-proclaimed fans if it'd be appropriate and recognisable before I started knitting. 

It's a simple variation of a very simple pattern - Ravelry project is here, for those of you thinking about making your own. The body was knit, and then I picked up stitches to knit the scarf. 

The scarf/collar/button band is shaped with short rows so it sits flat on the shoulder. See that wedge of cream? Those are short rows. I improvised the whole thing until it felt right-ish. All the scarf colours are from my scraps bins. 

Rather then fiddle with buttons, I popped one snap just at the collar. Snaps are better for new mums - and I omitted the scarf's fringe because that just seemed to be asking for trouble. 

It was simple and fun (except for all the ends I had to weave in!!) and is probably the perfect bit of baby knitting for a little Whovian. 

Why is it on bread? That's another story.

Baby Love

Have you seen booties? Booties are tiny little shoesies for tiny little feetsies and they're about the sweetest thing ever. It's a shame that you can't just knit them without some reason - your own child, or the guise of charity.

My boyfriend's sister's expecting, and I am tremendously excited. Not about baby snuggles or a new faux-family member (niece-ish? Niece-to-be? Niecefriend?), but about the knitting.

"Booties!" said an acquaintance. "Oh are you - "
"Knitting them for my boyfriend's sister, yes," I said placidly. I barely know her, but she is a perfect foil to accusing fertility questions.

Finished Project - Clapo-Ktus

This shawl is call the clap-ktus, which in my mind rhymes with "platypus." It was a very simple beginner's shawl. The shaping is on every right-side row, and the details are just dropped stitches. The yarn is called "Paradise." I wore it out for the first time today, and got cat-called twice, so obviously people like my new shawl a lot.

Wrapping and Turning - Short Rows and Continental Knitters

Short rows are a knitting technique which add more fabric to a piece. They're used to make heels of socks and add shaping in cardigans and all sorts of useful things.

To knit a short row, you knit halfway across a row, turn your work, and purl back. This can leave a gap, which is where you'd wrap and turn: the wrap and turn hides the gap. 

I learned short rows before I knew what I was doing and didn't have the sense to be intimidated by them. This is the best way to learn anything.

A friend who is a much better knitter than I am is having trouble because most of the instructions out there are written for English knitters (who hold the yarn in their right hands) rather than Continental knitters (who hold the yarn in their left hands, and scoop it up. Any newbie who wanders into G Unit is taught to knit Continental it's a wee bit more efficient and more importantly makes transitioning between crochet and knitting easier).

Here's a list of short row tutorials for Continental knitters:

• This video is very clear 
• Here are written instructions, if that's what you prefer
• Here is a photo tutorial
• TECHknitting on the subject

My advice for my friend was bugger it - if you can't manage to wrap and turn, you can always darn the finished product.

(Im)Perfect Gifts

Giving the perfect gift is an impossible goal. When it does occur it is happenstance: you cannot enter a mall, brandishing your credit card, saying, "The perfect gift is within, and I will find it!" Instead, you know something about a person and find a way to honour that.

This is a blankie for George.

George is my best friend's dad. He saw me crocheting once, and said he used to have a bunch of crocheted blankets that someone (his mother?) made, but they were all destroyed in a small house fire (everything was fine, except the kitchen and the blankets). I made him one last year, in the safest of colours and patterns - the reddish colour of last year's blankie was the colour their walls were painted.

He loved it. I don't think I've ever given such a successful gift. It's still on their couch a year later, still being used almost every day.

"This will never get burned," said George, seeing last year's blankie.
"Better the blanket than the house," I said, realistically.
"I'd sooner burn the house down and save the blanket."

A reaction like that gets another.

I love the colours, which look remind me old-fashioned treats: mock cream and chealsea buns. It's two strands of DK acrylic, held double, to make it go faster, and because they have a dog. Who would give merino to someone to a puppy? (More to the point: who would pay for the cost of the yarn?)

The ten-hook is the trick. Each stitch brings you a centimeter closer to finishing.

I didn't think George would like it quite as well as last year's blankie, which was a surprise, and just the right colour, but he loved it - or claimed to.

I'm less sure about the gift for my sister's fetus.

Well - that's the six-month size. I don't know what a fetus would do with a cardigan. The fetus will be my first niece and is so very wanted - I am so excited to meet her in a few months. But I am not sure my sister or her wife are yarn worthy. They got a shawl and a scarf, respectively last year, and beyond a "thank you," I never heard of the gifts again. That's fine by me - how every well-intended or expensive some gifts aren't wanted, or don't work - I just mentally crossed them off my 'yarn' list.

But the child is innocent - so far - and what kind of knitting aunt would I be if I didn't knit for baby?

So I chose a yarn which was rather too expensive, and darling buttons:

And it cost almost as much as I'd spend on yarn for a jumper for myself. But knitting for baby felt like I was doing something for it. It wasn't really a gift to my sister or her wife, who I am sure are inundated with baby clothes already, and if they weren't have the means to buy them themselves. It wasn't even really a gift for baby, who will be warm and dry and loved from the moment she is born, and will have clothes aplenty her whole life.

It was more of a gift for me, affirming (demanding) a connection with a creature that's far away in every sense. Happy Being-An-Aunt to me. In that sense, it was very successful. "Next year, I'll send a hat," I said.