Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Karen “PhileoSophia” sent me an email a while back* with a bunch of knitting-related suggestions for the Geek Test. What do you think about her proposal that there is a relationship between knitting and geekiness? Is knitting a hobby that attracts geeks, or vice versa? Perhaps you would be so kind as to draw a Ven diagram and/or a graph a scatter plot and include it in your comment below.

In any case, here is the email I received. At the very least you should check out the links at the bottom! I’ve linked to a couple before on my blog, but they’re all great enough to link again. And all are added to my “someday I’ll have skillz to knit that” pile. Especially the knitted dissected frog and rat, which I could imagine displaying in a shadow box on my living room wall.

Greetings Yvette,

I love your site!  I am a proud, female Major Geek as well as an avid knitter/crocheter.  I have noticed that there is an odd relationship between knitting and geekiness.  For the past few months, I have been trying to find the geekiest knitted items on the web.  I have found Futurama’s Bender toilet paper holder, binary scarves, probability sweaters, d4 shaped dicebags, R2-D2 hats, the Digestive system, a truly amazing knitted Brain, other *ahem* body parts and systems, and, (my personal favourites) knitted dissections of a frog and a rat.  Perhaps you should look into the geekiness of knitting and consider adding that to the test.  A couple of examples would be:  “Have you ever… Used dice to determine the cable pattern for a sweater you’re knitting?  Transferred a program in binary to binary knitting (where Knit=0 and Purl=1)?  Knit any body system?  (Bonus points for the Circulatory system)  Created amigurumi of any Star Wars character?  Star Trek character? etc, etc.”

Yes, I am trying to inflate my score…    For your amusement, I have included some fun links of geeky knits for you to peruse! Enjoy!

PhileoSophia
(A Knitting Geek)

Binary Scarf
Code Red Virus Scarf
Chaos Sweater
Star Wars Amigurumi
Knitted Dissections
Knitted Brain
Knitted Digestive System

*I’m behind in answering emails, in case you sent one and have not yet received a reply. I read them all and try to answer them all!

I do a little knitting from time to time, but I’m not very good. Mostly scarves and/or abandoned projects. (We shall not mention the cowl I made with my own non-pattern for a friend’s baby a few years ago.) I can knit and purl and even There’s just something about interpreting a pattern with 3-letter abbreviations (dpn, ssl, omg, wtf) that makes my eyes spin. I can’t even understand the concept of a “yarnover.” A yarn over what?!? That’s an incomplete sentence, not a noun!

Anyway. I have these fantasies of knitting some fabulous items for fashion, warmth, and expression of geekiness. Of course they only take an hour or so in my fantasies and turn out perfectly and I’m even sipping on margaritas while happily clicking my needles together and there’s nary a knot or dropped stitch.

Also, Matt Damon is doing shirtless sit-ups in my living room while Mike Rowe shovels something and sings to me.

….Um. What were we talking about? OH YEAH. Knitting.

At this point, I’m a little bit of an obsessive pattern saver. I know what I want to knit—I just need to develop the skills and patience and dedicate time to it and stuff. Once I do, though, here’s what I want to tackle first: knitting Star Wars inspired hats! These are my 3 favorite fangirl patterns:

R2D2 knit beanie by CarissaKnits. A very awesome (free!) pattern that is somehow made by the telescoping lens thingy on the front.

A Leia knit wig by ansleybleu. This one’s not free—the downloadable pattern PDF costs $7.95 from her Etsy store. It was apparently originally a commission specifically for Carrie Fisher (through one of her friends). It’s basically honeybun earmuffs with a beanie instead of one of those annoying headbands. Oh, and Princess Leia Buns of Hotness!

Finally, the Yoda knit hat, felted for extra coolness, by Sunshyne. The free pattern is for a baby-size head. But by the time I develop mad knitting skillz with the first two projects, I bet I will have the skillz to resize this pattern for an adult noggin. Now that I think about it, though… it would be very cool to wear the knit Leia buns and carry around a baby* in a knit Yoda hat. That sort of cosplay requires a little more, though… maybe a third character… anyone know of a free Han-Solo-in-Carbonite knitting pattern?

*So I guess in addition to mad knitting skillz, I would also need a baby. Or, if you’re following the Star Wars mythology that is expanded in books and such, I would need two babies since [SPOILER] Han and Leia have twins (a boy and a girl, natch). There can’t be two Yodas, though. I cannot think of a good solution to this problem. Oh. Em. Gee. I just did! One of the babies would wear the R2D2 beanie!!! Now that’s a full circle Star Wars geek craft geek-out. If I had a lightsaber, it would be extended.

There’s a geeky woman out there who loves her nerd/geek husband so much, she spent a TON of time making and knitting a Super Mario Bros. screenshot into a sweater vest for him. She even hand-dyed the brightest green yarn because she couldn’t find any in that shade. I am impressed. I may also have exclaimed, “Now THAT is geeky!”

Her site has just been updated with a free PDF of the pattern.

I could see myself making an epic knitting pattern like this, and possibly buying some of the yarn. Perhaps I would experiment with hand-dyeing yarn. I would probably stop at that point, though, because it would take me for-freaking-ever, and even if I eked out enough patience to see it through, I very highly doubt that my husband would ever wear something like this. Mostly because of its sweater vest nature.

A full sweater, though? Now that’s another story… and it gives me a headache to think about knitting that much detail right now!

The adorable baby-sized knit Link outfit, though? Maybe someday. It has an arrow quiver designed to hold a baby bottle. I just died from the cuteness.

I need to share some other braintastic stuff I’ve come across recently. First, there’s the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art in Oregon. Its images stimulate my crafty nerd synapses and make me squee! My favorite is the Knitted Brain, which took one year for Dr. Karen Norberg to knit. There’s an article about her project here. It reminds me of the knitted digestive tract I came across last year but looks a lot more labor-intensive.

And then there’s the recipe for chocolate ganache-filed brain cupcakes by notsohumblepie in Seattle. “Because it is a well known fact that human brains are filled with chocolate ganache,” she says. Tee hee! They look delicious, and could be easily translated to a zombie-themed fest if the decorative icing were placed on a red velvet cupcake.

If you are in any way geeky, nerdy, or offbeat, you really need to check out her recipes… especially the ones labeled science and weird. They’re all complete with mouthwatering photos. Well, all of the photos are mouthwatering except the petri dish cookies. Having been a biology major at one point in my life, and having a vivid smell memory of petri dishes in the lab, the execution of her design with all their isolated colonies kinda makes me want to hurl. But you go ahead and enjoy!