Tag Archive

Following up on my established nerd knitting trend, I have, once again, shown my love for a thing by knitting it. This time it’s the NBC show Hannibal, which crawled into my brain and basically took over. I started watching the show because it was on Amazon Prime and Cleolinda had been doing recaps of it (and I should really learn by now to just watch everything Cleo watches), and very quickly fell in love with it. It’s a very odd show… like, it’s probably not a good idea to shotgun it, given the general violence, cannibalism, and horribleness that is the backbone of the show and I find I need to be in the right mindset to watch it, but still. Love.

Anyway, there’s a stag that shows up a lot and Cleo designated it Dire Ravenstag (and now there’s a Twitter account cause this show is ALL OVER Twitter, let me tell you), and it looks like this:

I knitted one.

Let me tell you, I scoured the internet for an appropriate stag pattern for this. SCOURED. A pattern for a sufficiently bulky and powerful stag does not exist. Eventually, I gave up and decided to make it up as I went along, and I think that worked out pretty well. The head, neck, and body are all done in one piece using short rows. The antlers, ears, and legs were made separately and sewed on. Despite the thin legs and heavier head, Dire KnittingStag does actually stand up on his own, provided his legs are spread out a little bit. The yarn is a recycled wool. I used a hand card to brush the torso for a fuzzy look, and the eyes and nose are puff paint, just like I do for sharks.

I am super incredibly thrilled with how he came out. I kind of want to write up the pattern (it would, at least fill a stag-shaped hole in the Ravelry patterns database), but we all know how often I say that and how often I actually follow through. Maybe I’ll make one in a more live-deer appropriate color. Or maybe I’ll just knit another Dire Ravenstag. Most likely, though, is that I won’t and will instead move on to a hundred other things to knit.