FO: DNA scarf

This has taken me a shameful length of time to finish! Cables require my eyes as well as hands, so I wasn't able  to work on it while studying. Quite happy with how it turned out though!

The pattern is here.  I did fourteen pattern repeats instead of nine, as when I was half-way through what the pattern said to do, it was too short altogether.  I was worried fourteen might have been going overboard, but I think it turned out a nice length.

I used 3.5mm needles for the whole scarf, as using the 2.75mms that the pattern recommended to start off looked too narrow. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino - far finer than I would have considered for a scarf, but the projects that used it on Ravelry made the helix look really sharp.  It's cosy without being bulky, and the whole scarf only needed just over three skeins.

I really like this pattern an awful lot, and might make something for myself with it. (A hat? A jumper? Another scarf? WHO KNOWS!) I do love me some molecular biology, and as it is, I don't think I'm making best use of my knitwear to inform people of this fact.

P.S. I have been making headbands/ear-warmers to sell at a craft sale, but I haven't been able to take pictures I can use, because my hair is currently at a length where wearing headbands gives me eighties sports hair. And that's just not a good sell.

So I'll need to either cut my hair, or borrow someone's head, before I can take pictures. (That yarn is from this hat, which I frogged after realising it would do nothing to keep my head warm. But so pretty!)

House-keeping

My Social Justice League-type posts can now be found here. This blog will just be used for crafts and projects from here out.

I had thought of keeping all the posts in the one place - hobbies are a way of interacting with the world! educating yourself about how to treat people like people is a way of interacting with the world! - but I started this with a view to it being a crafts blog, and the other posts have been becoming more  frequent, and I just like to compartmentalise things.  Followers on that one would be lovely if that's your bag!

Shoddy costumery: Tonks!

I wasn't going to post this because it wasn't very good, but I have been looking through lots of cosplay pictures, and am trying to put together something respectable for this, and have a renewed hankering to dress up as things.  It's a pity Ireland doesn't do cosplay conventions.

So!  My college do-gooder group had a Harry Potter party two weeks ago, and I went as Tonks.  I wasn't going to post the pictures as both the costume and the photos weren't up to much - I forgot about it until the day before, and had to do everything in a rush - but it's also the first time I've dressed as as a specific character in quite a while, so I may as well document so I have something to mark progress against.

Pro:  I have short hair!  Tonks has short hair!  I like an excuse to do silly things with my hair!

Con: I brought glitter spray, not colour spray.  The fault lies entirely with me for shopping in Claire's and also for being unable to read labels at twenty-one, especially having just finished up the guts of a year working in a lab.  (Incidentally, gloves are for whiners who don't respect the environment, and should my hands be this colour?) I tried to make up for it by loading on the glitter, in the hope that a layer of pink glitter would look pink.  It did not.

Pro:  I borrowed a wand from a girl in my class (she says it was a gift).  As I was leaving my room, I heard someone coming up the stairs.  Not wanting to look ridiculous, I hid the wand up my sleeve.  Nothing like it for feeling like a wizard.

Con: That is a terrible photo and asking people to take photos of me  makes me feel too narcissistic to do more than once.

Con: Those shorts should ideally be black.  (They were jeans in a previous incarnation, but I was wearing them while walking the Camino de Santiago in first year, and it was unseasonably war.)  I might have dyed them if I'd had the time.

Pro: People understood who I was meant to be!  I think this is a victory as I based the costume on my perception of her in the books, which was quite tomboyish, whereas the films were not so.

Pro: I went to the club as it was free in, and spent the entire time sitting in the corridor around the side having a Harry Potter trivia contest with fellow do-gooders and some strangers who came just for the Harry Potter.

Costume:  

Black string top

Black pinstriped underbust corset

Black shirt

Black waistcoat borrowed from my boyfriend

Cut-off denim shorts

Ripped black tights

Unlaced black Doc Martens

I think it was alright for a rush job, though the hairspray was disappointing.  I already have PLANS for October and Hallowe'en, so hopefully I can make people have costume parties!