I Am A Shark Now

Last Halloween I wanted to be a shark. We couldn't find a costume that I liked and was in my size. A whole year has gone by and I couldn't shake that thought: I needed to be a shark.

Yesterday my yearlong dream came true. I am now a shark.

I think the costume brings out my eyes

It arrived on our doorstep and as soon as I could, I put it on and headed outside to take it for a test run. Our neighbors across the way saw me walking down our steps and started shouting, "It's a shark!" "Hi shark!" Both the kids and adults were laughing. These are people we don't really talk to. They have kids, we don't. All our lives are so busy. But for a moment, we were all friends and able to bond over how silly I looked. It was great.

Connor and I took some pictures before heading back up. Before we got through the door, our next door neighbors saw and had a good laugh. Then we started sending silly shark pictures to friends and family. In the space of an hour 13+ people had a laugh.

Connor says it looks like I'm having a graduation photo

It is a goofy costume, but I think I've figured out the source of everyone's amusement. The comedy in a shark costume is dependent on the knees. If the shark doesn't have knees, it clearly can't be funny.

I told Connor he is married to a shark now. I don't plan on coming out of the suit any time soon.

Brinker

Today's featured pattern is Brinker. The hat was inspired by the book Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates, which was published in 1865 by Mary Mapes Dodge. Brinker is the second pattern to show up in Lit Knits.

Much of the story features ice skates. The climax of the book centers in on a skating race, so it seemed especially important to have skating tracks on the hat. And just as the racers go off into the distance, the skate tracks on the hat also become smaller as they go toward the top of the crown. Although it is optional, I liked adding a big, fluffy snowball of a pom pom to the top of the hat.

When I started out designing the hat, I was a little stumped as to what color to make it. Brinker was the 4th design to be knit. At this point, I had to make a decision between choosing mostly neutral colored yarns for the book or to inject some color.

I even went so far as to make three samples. In the end, the blue one seemed like it fit the rest of the book the best. To me, the white edging was like a snow bank and the blue of the hat was like the thick ice covering the river. I imagined skaters jumping off of the snowbank and skating onto the frozen river and the ribbing reflects this thought. The ribbing on the edge of the hat connects to the cables just like the tracks skaters would leave from the snow to the river.

Mum and I drove 3.5 hours one way to get photos with snow in the background. The number of times I have been to the snow is extremely limited, which turned out to be a problem during this particular shoot.
At the end of the shoot, I had this great idea to make it look like it was snowing. I thought I would just throw some snow into the air and everything would look magical. And just to be sure we captured the magic, I set the camera to rapid shoot.

Well, we definitely captured some magic. It just wasn't the magic I was aiming for. I'm not well versed in snow physics, but that day I learned that if you throw chunks of snow into the air, they come back down as chunks of snow.

And that is how I got the picture for the errata page of my website.

Snowy Sneak Peek

I live in a part of the country where, if you really wanted to, you could surf and ski in the same day. I sometimes even see car commercials showing some young daredevils doing both activities in one day. I don't identify with them. I've skied once in my life and I'm terrified of being in the ocean above my knees. Anyways, on Wednesday, Mum and I drove three hours to get to the snow, took pictures for two and a half hours, and drove back home another three hours.

Why would we do that? The guy at Starbucks couldn't fathom that we would travel that far to take pictures for a book. But we did. And the pictures are awesome. Even the outtakes. The image above was captured after I threw some snow in the air to make the picture look more magical. I thought that if you throw snowballs into the air, they might break up and come back down looking like a snow flurry. What I actually learned is that when you throw snowballs into the air, that is how they come back down.
The picture was taken with my camera set to rapid shoot. So in the future, when the book is out, I think I'll have to make a full gif of what lead to this shot. Until then, this is just another sneak peek.

Mothra Is Eating My Yarn

We've had a bit of a moth problem around the house recently. I'm usually all for "throw the bug out of the house" method. But moths are a bit different.

Moths (or moth larvae to be precise) eat wool, silk, and other protein fibers. That's right. The moths might be eating MY yarn. It's them or my yarn. I'm sure you can see how that battle has been playing out. I'm certainly not losing.

More Than Meets The Eye

Apparently Transformers exist. I got stuck behind an Autobot the other day. Didn't see any Decepticons though.