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As has been very firmly established, when I like something (movie, book, tv show, etc), I tend to make things. Following in that proud tradition, may I humbly present my greatest nerd crafting achievement to date, a Star Trek dress:
This opus, knit in fingering weight (recycled) yarn on size two needles with no pattern (but contiguous sleeves) took over eight months from conception to completion. I put it down and didn’t touch it for a couple of those months, but still. It took a long-ass time to knit. It’s a ton of stockinette. I can’t even think of how many yards of yarn are in it, lest I faint dead away.
It is probably my proudest knitting accomplishment to date. I love it.
I’ll try to keep my blathering to a minimum, but Star Trek is My People. I adore Star Trek. There are episodes of The Next Generation that aren’t just good, but are probably some of the best television you will ever see. (There are also some episodes of Next Generation that are probably the worst television you’ll ever see, but we don’t talk about those). I am so utterly confused by people who didn’t like Deep Space Nine. Star Trek has fascinating worlds, captivating plots, and representation in SPADES. Not to get all social justice on y’all (I save that for Twitter and Tumblr, mostly), but there are just SO MANY LADIES in Star Trek. I love it.
Now, my dress isn’t really an exact replica. It’s mostly based on the Original Series uniform. I’m sort of still in the middle of the Star Trek franchise (I’m in season five of Voyager with Enterprise next up and I haven’t seen most of TOS (but I have seen most of the movies)) (and the first person that tries to nerd shame/fake geek girl me is going to get a lecture and the ban hammer in that order). But there was a lot of knitting to be done and I didn’t want to make most of it black. And the coloring for the Next Generation uniforms would have required intarsia in the round, which, no.
It was, for the most part, a pretty easy knit though. I mean, it’s mostly just around and around and around with some increases thrown in at the skirt. I’m almost crazy enough to knit another one for my Nerd Wars dissertation. I’ve been wanting to do a dissertation for the next round, and it would almost have to be a lace weight dress because there are few things that would actually take three months to knit. I’ll have to look through the yarn stash and see what I have in enough quantity–the sweater that the yarn for this dress came from was enormous with a gigantic cowl neck. I guess I could always do stripes.
I made this dress for being-a-gigantic-nerd purposes, but also to wear to a comics convention that was in DC in April, Awesome Con. As usual, I took no pictures (well, that’s not true. I took a couple of pictures of awesome cosplay), but I had an absolute blast. It was very different from the anime conventions I’ve been to in the past (for more than just the different subject matter), but I’m definitely going again next year. Plus I got to meet Timothy Zahn, author of the Thrawn Trilogy among other things, and that was just SO COOL. I also got to meet Janine Spendlove and Matt Slay of Time Traveled Tales and Silence in the Library Publishing, both of whom signed my copy of Time Traveled Tales, and JK Woodward, an artist for IDW who draws the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover comics. He drew me an amazing commission of Data and Spot.
One of these days I’ll go to a convention and actually take pictures that I will post on the blog, but today, as they say, is not that day.
I finished my Great Gatsby Dress! It was a super fast knit (I think I finished it in about a a week), and I’m utterly thrilled with the finished object.
Also, I got about a foot of hair chopped off. It’s delightfully short and I donated about 10 inches to locks of love. Anyway, back to the knitting.
(The bottom’s not uneven, I just don’t stand straight and that bulge is the dress underneath, which is empire waisted)
Pattern: Great Gatsby Dress, from the Summer 2009 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Recycled Linen/Cotton blend, navajo plied and dyed with Dylon Dye
Needle: Mostly US 5/3.75 cause I couldn’t find my 6/4mm KP tips
Mods: Um, a lot. My gauge was like, waaay off (cause you know I don’t swatch), so I did as many repeats of the Fern Lace pattern to get the right width and then modified from there. Also, I left off the picot bind off and just did garter edges.
Like I said, I am so utterly delighted with this dress. I’d been searching for the right yarn in thrift shops for a while, knowing I’d have to recycle a large sweater to make the project affordable. It took some doing, but I finally found a lace-weight linen/cotton blend that was large enough. I frogged it, tripling the yarn as I wound it, and dyed it with about 3/4 a packet of Dylan dye. The dye job came out to the color wanted (dark grey) with some variation (but not enough to be obnoxious).
The pattern itself was pretty easy to follow for the most part, and I really like the effect picking up the skirt stitches on the wrong side has. The bodice was a little confusing, but that’s mostly because my stitch counts were way off. I just mirrored the armholes like the back, which I followed more closely to the pattern, and worked the neckline the way I’d make any scoop necked sweater. The effect: SUPER CUTE.
The only issue I have with the dress is that it’s a wee bit short, which means I have to wear something underneath it (I quite like it over this white dress, which is how I had planned to wear it). I could probably get away with just an underskirt as the top part is pretty opaque (though the stitching is pretty loose, so who knows). I was worried the bodice was going to be do tight, but I did some extra bust inscreases on the side, and it fits quite well.
Next on the knitting agenda is a reknit of my Leah vest. I frogged the longer version cause the shaping didn’t sit right and I plan to remake the shorter version so I can finish drafting the pattern and hopefully get it into testing this week. Cheers!
Stitch, Brinn, Stitch! 