Knittin' Crap: Starfleet February 2015

We spent February at the Academy with all those young, perky, eager cadets.

Mission	Report
Command - Demonstrate ways to overcome a crafting “no-win” scenario to your cadets by planning and swatching for a project.	Although I had carefully considered details for my Away Mission for this tour before the tour actually began, my other duties kept me from confirming its viability through proof-of-concept work with the raw materials until after the start of the tour. My first sample came out at the perfect specifications (25x36 st on US4), but I was not sure I liked the lack of density, so I made another sample to smaller specifications (on US3), and ended up calculating that the original sample was superior. But, the extra time was not wasted, as I now had evidence that I could move forward with additional certainty that my mission would ultimately be a success. Swatches (tested for sleep-worthiness by my invasive quadrupeds and marked as approved):
Diplomatic - Show your cadets the importance of details by creating something involving detail work or embellishments	Without detailed facial expressions, this very undiplomatic penguin would look like an unexpressive round ball on top of a tube. And he certainly wouldn’t be able to express his indignation at being shoved aside by the giant, undiplomatic invasive quadruped:
Medical - One of the hardest lessons to accept is that you can’t save them all, and sometimes the only thing you can do is give comfort. Your Mission: Teach your cadets how to cope with these situations by creating something comforting, either for yourself or for someone else. Bonus points for charitable submissions.	Many cultures on Old Earth long had a tradition of brightening the environment of the ill with the often colorful and pleasantly scented reproductive organs of certain plants. Plants of the genus Tulipa were especially prized for their elegant beauty. I have replicated some and put them on a bunting for wall decoration.
Tactical - Teach your cadets the value of thinking quickly by making something very speedy (something that takes a day or less).	Any Starfleet cadet who has taken the Anomalous Quantum Particles course final exam will already know that concentrating on details while under time pressure is particularly difficult. To practice mental focus while simultaneously watching the clock, I manualy fabricated this special neck gear, which also acts as a sensor to monitor heart rate and blood pressure in tense situations. Keeping track of many small components, manipulating them without the aid of nano-tools, and completing an important piece of equipment are all skills that may be needed during an emergency when the replicators are not available either because of mechanical failure or on an away team mission.
The Brig - Finish off UFOs.	This prisoner hit its rehabilitation target 3 weeks ago, but I had more important things to do than process the paperwork. (Like, take naps.)

Badtz-Maru pattern by Mei Li Lee
Bull's-Eye pattern by Jennifer Hansen
Necklace designed by Un-Roen Manarata

News: Creative Cats!

• Magikitty papercraft!
  
  Download here. No, I haven't made it, because I suck at papercraft. And Spoon would just squash it.
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• Hello Kitty in all kinds of far out mash-ups with various people and creatures, real and imagined.
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Other: More Rilakkuma Cuteness!

I was too lazy to take a picture, so I didn't mention getting Rilakkuma origami paper when I was at Kinokuniya last week.



(The Hello Kitty paper was from a previous visit.) Both packages even include cute character stickers! And the Rilakkuma paper has instructions to make his face, although it would look weird making it in the printed paper.



About 6 years ago, I was in a massive origami phase. It had started out as making small gift boxes for the beaded jewelry I made (I was also in the midst of a beading obsession that lasted over a decade) and progressed from there. I never did find a unicorn pattern I could make, though. I was pretty good at a T-rex pattern which I had memorized for awhile and have since forgotten. I don't make much origami now, but I still occasionally procure cute papers.

Anyway, this post was supposed to focus on Rilakkuma. (This is also occasionally Anglicized to "Relaxuma," making it rather clear that the word "relax" was incorporated from English.) I went back to the San-X Rilakkuma page to poke around some more and found this page of high quality images you can download and print out or use on your computer. There's a monthly calendar page which is useful to people who can't read Japanese, as the month is printed as YYYY.MM and the days of the week are even printed using English abbreviations. There are also various desktop background images featuring various San-X characters, pages that look like they could be used as wrapping paper, black and white outlines meant for coloring yourself, pages with light-colored backgrounds to be used as stationary, gift tags, icon images for your computer, and all kinds of other stuff. How neat!

This page features videos of various characters. The music of the first one, with little birds dancing, seemed to disturb Spoon somehow.

Riding the Rails: Day 3 Am I There Yet?

... Day 3 continued ...

I should say that I was actually really hungry by now. It was late afternoon, I'd basically had a bagel for breakfast and lunch combined, and I'm sure the whole thing was making me cranky, although Olivia could have tried the patience of a saint. The only restaurants I could see near the Winchester Mystery House were big sit-down chains, and I wasn't that desperate.

I got off the bus after a few miles at Saratoga. I had forgotten that the walk from here to Kinokuniya was more like a mile until I had been walking awhile. It was mostly what looked like an older residential area, although the ubiquitous new condos and giant apartment complexes were starting to show up. I knew I was going in the right direction, but still, I couldn't see anything ahead that looked like stores until... There it was! Yay! In a strip mall mainly of Japanese stores.

In square footage, it was definitely bigger than the Los Angeles store, but it wasn't as densely packed with bookshelves. The stationary section looked larger, the manga section definitely seemed larger after I'd circulated a few times, and the crafts section was... smaller? Yes, I traveled around the store multiple times to see if they'd hidden stuff, but there were only about two shelves of knitting/crochet books. I was sorely disappointed. They did have a knitting stitches book I'd been looking for, but they didn't have any amigurumi books. What? Then on yet another circuit, I noticed that they had a small display of amigurumi books, both Japanese and American (English) publications, on a table near the front. It was still only a fraction of the selection in Los Angeles, though, and they didn't have the new Hello Kitty book I had wanted. I suppose I could have asked about it, but I was hungry and tired, and, well, didn't really need to be going out of my way to spend more money.

In addition to the 300 knitting stitches book, I got a book of crochet motifs you work continuously instead of the more common, mind-numbing method of sewing finished pieces together one at a time. I also got an amigurumi book I hadn't seen before. It had a lot of charm-like patterns, and a pattern of a bumblebee man that reminded me of that character on Mexican TV. Bumblebee man has a little lady bug lady friend, too.

I walked along the strip mall and went into a ramen house. It was a hole-in-the-wall, I-wonder-what-grade-this-would-get-if-San-Jose-did-Los-Angeles-style-health-inspection-grades, no-maybe-I-don't-want-to-know joint, but it was pretty crowded and no one keeled over while I was there. I looked at the menu, but all the ramen had pork (there was even a note -- "All ramen dishes have pork") and I don't eat mammals, so I got a boiled chicken salad with kimchi. The kimchi had completely drained my sinuses after about 3 bites. It was hot, but it was good, and the chicken had a good curry sauce on it.

I felt much better with food in my stomach. I was still tired, though, and the sun was beginning to get lower in the sky. I walked back down to the bus stop, which didn't seem so far away this time, and the bus came about 5 minutes later. I rode back to the light rail station where I had caught the first bus, and then waited about 15 minutes for a northbound train.

Other: More Totoro Infatuation

Too cute!	Super neat!
Wow!	Awesome! (But, uh, not awesome enough to pay $260.)

They also have lots of other Totoro character plushies, but I can make my own...

From the same place, you can also get some of the fabled Hello Kitty toilet paper. And, uh, Hello Kitty insect repellent patches.

Knittin' Crap: Amigurumi Groovy Fun Fun Fun!

So here's the story of why I wanted to visit the Japanese bookstore, as mentioned in today's Metro Journal post.

There are apparently some amazing and unique Japanese knitting stitch books, and the beauty of such things is that the stitches are graphed. So as long as one has the key to the graph, one does not really need to read kanji or hiragana or katakana (not that I can tell the difference). And isn't it nice of them to use Arabic numerals?

Anyways, as these books are moderately expensive imports, I wanted to see one in person before buying, so I finally got around to googling about them and came across this link, and I smacked myself on the forehead going, "You live 10 miles from Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, dumbass!"

So I went to Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo (see today's Metro Journal entry for the story of getting there). They had all kinds of wonderful amigurumi books, including a Hello Kitty one! (Sheesh, I paid much less than that site, but they have the most pictures of it.) In the basket. I also got a Japanese quilt magazine for my mother. It has a pull-out pattern, but I don't know enough about quilting to know if it's usable. It had some very pretty pictures, even if she can't use the patterns.

What I couldn't find were the knitting stitch books. Maybe they were out. I had forgotten to write down the ISBN numbers, but I will do that next time. I got enough to keep me busy. Following some of the amigurumi patterns will take guesswork, while others would require minor miracles. Most of the Hello Kitty looks vaguely straightforward, or will leave me at least knowing the kanji/katakana/whatever characters for body parts, but it's Hello Kitty or bust!