Ridiculously easy stockinette cowl

I got an orphaned ball of SWTC Pure a couple of weeks ago from Jimmy Beans Wool. It's a fingering weight soy silk yarn, and given the softness and the weight and the drape it had, I decided to make a quick cowl. I tried a couple of stitch patterns, but the stockinette won out because it showed off the color the best. The yarn is actually 4 different shades of purple plied together, and the end result is a really nice depth of color effect.







I cast on 90 stitches on size 7 needles, and just worked in stockinette stitch until I was happy with the length. And now I have a purple cowl to go with my purple winter coat and my purple purse.

Farpoint 2010

Thank goodness for the epic snow removal that's been going on here in the DC/Baltimore corridor. Things were cleared out enough to allow the 2010 Farpoint Convention to go on as scheduled! It's a small sci-fi convention in Timonium, named after the Farpoint outpost in the series premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Happily, the Timonium Crowne Plaza hotel was not built on top of a giant captive space jellyfish.

The convention was able to book several recognizable guests with a lot of sci-fi credits: Lee Arenberg (Pirates of the Caribbean), Sam Witwer (BSG, Smallville), Mira Furlan (Babylon 5, Lost), and Felicia Day (The Guild, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). Laurel and I got to see 3 of the 4 Q&A sessions; we missed Lee Arenberg's because it was happening at the same time as Mira Furlan and Felicia Day's autograph session:


Yay! We talked WoW with Felicia Day for a couple of minutes, and she was just as sweet as could be... which is probably part of why the charity auction for lunch with her ended up going for $5000. Seriously.

I also met Mira Furlan and got her autograph, but didn't get a picture with her. After the autograph session, we wandered through the vendor area and then went to the game room for a little while before heading back to the main room to watch the costume competition and charity auction. This was one of the more astounding costume entries:


It's a reproduction of Kaylee's pink frilly dress from the "Shindig" episode of Firefly, and it was absolutely stunning. She did this without a pattern,and had to piece together the bodice by hand, along with custom-dyeing some of the fabric and hand-tying the tassels on the sleeves (she has the details available here). Just incredible.

And the evening was capped nicely by a screening of the new Star Trek movie (it is FARPOINT, after all, so they have to get some Trek in there).

All in all, a very enjoyable day!

Again with the snow

Snowpocalpyse 2: Snow Harder has arrived, and I'm preparing for a couple of days of being unable to go anywhere. After last Saturday, when I was driving home and ended up skidding into a full 180-degree spin that ended with me facing oncoming traffic, I'm perfectly content to stay right where I am. I prefer less excitement than that in my commute, thank you.

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday for my regular Thursday grocery run, and was greeted by empty freezer case after empty freezer case, and empty shelf after empty shelf. I wish I'd had a camera with me; the store looked like it had been looted, and the employees all looked a little bit shell-shocked. The library was CRAZY, so I imagine that places selling food and essentials were much, much worse.

Anyway, in sitting here this afternoon, I realized that I never shared this FO from a couple of weeks ago:


He's a voidwalker, one of the warlock minion creatures from World of Warcraft. I made up the pattern, and will need to tweak some things if I want to post it here. His shape isn't 100% correct. However, the recipient immediately knew what this guy was, so it was close enough. The main body is some blue acrylic I had on hand, with some black boucle for his shadow cloud and some gold embroidery floss for his bracers and eyes. He's kind of adorable for a demonic creature summoned from the Twisting Nether.