You will need:

• Masking tape (duct tape may work better depending on your needs. I couldn’t find duct tape, and masking tape had the advantage of being easily tearable.)
• Pantyhose or knee-highs (at least one pair)
• One plastic shopping bag
• One styrofoam hobby head
• Pillow fluff or other stuffing (I used my crap handspun)

Do NOT put the plastic bag on your head until you prepare it. You hear me? Here’s how to prepare it.

WithOUT the plastic bag on your head, estimate the distance between your chin and the bridge of your nose. Cut a large chunk out of the plastic bag that is at least this size if not bigger. Do NOT even try putting the plastic bag on your head until you have done this.

Have you cut the chunk out? Good. Test it on your head, making SURE to position the hole over your mouth and nose. Your mouth and nose should be COMPLETELY clear of the plastic bag. If they’re not, take the bag off immediately and cut the hole bigger. You want NO PLASTIC  over ANY part of your mouth and nose. I don’t care how long you can hold your breath. Can you see the big hole? I’ve outlined it for you.

Take it off again. There’s more to prepare.

If you are using pantyhose, cut the hips out so you end up with two thigh-highs. If you are using knee-highs, cut off the band at the knee. You want that edge to be as stretchy as possible. I got a ten-pack of knee-highs at the grocery store for this purpose, for $5. You can also cut eye-holes in the bag if you think it will help. It didn’t help me.

Pull at least two knee-highs over your head. You want to have at least one that can stay on your head and one that you can cut off. You should be able to pull them down past your chin. If you can’t, cut the toe out too and layer them. This will squoosh your nose, flattening out your facial features on the final product. If you need your neck as well as your head to be cast, cut the toe out and pull it down to your neck.

If the pantyhose won’t fit over your head, you can cut them up the side and tape them inside the plastic bag to make a breathable screen. If you go this route, you should use two bags WITH SCREENS instead of one—again, one to cut off and one to protect your hair. Do NOT put a plastic bag on your head without securing your large hole for breathing.

Make sure your scissors are somewhere that you can reach them by feel. Pull the plastic bag over your head, ensuring again that the large hole leaves your nose and mouth unobstructed. Tie the handles at the base of your skull.

Cut/tear a piece of tape. This first one will go (loosely) around your neck to keep the pantyhose from riding up over your chin. It should not be so tight as to choke you; just tight enough to keep the pantyhose down. The tape will not stick well to the pantyhose. It will stick well to the plastic bag.

You should be able to breathe around the masking tape, but CHECK THIS before you go taping up your head. That said, going by feel, tape up your head. Make sure you cross pieces of tape for strength. Save the eyes and mouth for last. Here we have the one advantage of masking tape over duct tape—if you find you can’t breathe, or you’re getting claustrophobic, you can cut a small slit in the tape and tear the sucker right off your head quickly.

The taping of your head will go vastly more easily if you have a friend to assist. I could have asked someone, but I wanted to make sure it was possible to do solo. It is.

Feel all over your head. Patch up any spots where you feel plastic or nylon until it feels solid.

Find your scissors. Feel at the back of your neck until you can separate one layer of pantyhose from the next. Insert the scissors in between the two layers of pantyhose and cut carefully. You should be able to slide them up the back of your skull and cut the cast off easily. If you are very worried about your hair, you can cut a small slit in the tape and tear until you can pull the cast off.

Once the cast feels loose enough, pull it off. If you’ve done this right, the outer layer of pantyhose will go along with the tape and the inner layer will stay put. You can double-check that you didn’t cut any of your hair by checking for holes in the inner layer of pantyhose.

Shove in some pillow fluff. You don’t want very much yet.

Insert the styrofoam hobby head in your cast. Stuff in the pillow fluff to fill in any gaps. Tape up the back of the head. Make sure that the edges meet, or this head will be bigger than your real head.

This gap is far too big.

You now have an approximation of your own head.

To this end, I have taken two steps. I am glad I have taken the steps now, because I am already hitting snags.

One, I have cast my own head in masking tape in preparation for sculpting Fi’s hair. Tutorial for that on Friday.

The snag: I wasn’t paying attention to my back seam and I overstuffed the head. It is about an inch around bigger than my real head and extremely face-heavy, which is why I’m using my feet to hold it up in the picture. It will have to be remade.

Two, I have started a prototype of Zelda’s tiara. It will be made out of fun foam. I have finally figured out how to curve fun foam permanently. I can also tell already that I will be making more than one of these before I get it right. I laid out my pattern pieces on my bed and asked my sister to identify them. After a few moments she said “Zelda’s jewelry?” which means I must be on the right track.

It CURVES, suckers! Nyahaha---yeah, you can't really see it in the picture.

The snag: I read that standard Elmer’s glue was plenty strong enough for this kind of work. So far I disagree, but since I started with that I might as well finish the project out with that before I try to find something stronger. (I’m really not sure what other kind of glue I’d try.)

Hopefully I can try attaching them together and sealing them later today.

I have a few ideas.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Pros: I have a regency dress pattern already, and the dress would hide my running shoes.
Cons: My hair wouldn’t work and I couldn’t wear a wig. Also, the book was lousy.

Flapper Zombie
Pros: Unique and my hair would be perfect.
Cons: Running shoes will be completely visible and I might get cold.

Sanskrit
(Get it? A sari and zombie makeup, ’cause it’s a dead language!)
Pros: Costume would be warm and would hide running shoes. Crap wig would be fun.
Cons: Sari might fall off if I trip over it

Zombie Prom
Pros: Easy and a classic.
Cons: Least amount of originality.

Hopefully I will be revisiting/adding to this list later.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the yarn was turning out quite nubby—once I took a good look at the fiber, I realized it had lots of little bits in it that simply do not draft out. That’s fine; the nubbyness is one of the reasons people will card silk noil in with other fibers for texture in an art yarn.

Despite the slubs, I measured WPI (wraps per inch) at 49—this passes laceweight and cobweb yarn and lands what I’ve spun in gossamer yarn.

As I pondered how nubby the yarn was, I started wondering if there is some sort of connection between silk noil and tsumugi silk.

Noil is made from the short, broken bits of fiber left over when all of the good fiber has been carded. You can have wool noil, or silk noil, or noil from any kind of fiber. Tsumugi is a type of fabric made from the short, broken fiber left over in a silk cocoon when all the good threads have been removed.

Yarn spun from silk noil and tsumugi fabric can both be characterized by slubs in the fiber, creating a nubby texture in the overall fabric. New silk noil and new tsumugi both feel and look closer to cotton than silk, (not terribly shiny or slick) though they get silkier the more they are washed. I compared the feel of my silk noil yarn to the feel of a tsumugi kimono that I own—both are nubby, both are cotton-y.

Ironically, tsumugi began as a way for poor Japanese silk producers to utilize their leftovers to make a nice fabric for themselves. Now tsumugi is a highly prized textile and can sometimes be quite expensive.

A close-up of tsumugi---not the kimono I have, but a photo I swiped from a professional photographer.

I want to say that, were I to weave with my silk noil yarn, I would be weaving tsumugi. (Aside from the fact that real tsumugi-making involves liberal use of starch, baking soda, and other additives.) But, I don’t have the research to back it up, so I can’t say for sure. I can’t confirm that the broken bits left over from carding good silk = short bits left over in the silk cocoon. It could be that silk noil is a byproduct of carding the good silk and tsumugi fiber is a byproduct of simply removing the silk fibers from the cocoon pre-carding. I would have to talk to someone—or several someones—to be absolutely sure, and I’d probably have to go to Japan to do it. (Not that I’d complain about that!) But it seems like a pretty good hunch, don’t you think?

My mother also had an idea that I’m running with—I’m going to see if I can sell some items I make to local shops that carry things made by local artists. Producing the best quality product I can (and making sure I’m producing items that cannot be store-bought) will also require refining my technique. So far I’ve found success in two areas.

One: Finer felting

I’ve felted solid-colored things or things with big blocks of color, but I wanted to see how my felting technique would hold up to more intricate patterns. It turns out that the item comes out just fine.

Two: Cabling in color

I love cabling; I’d say it’s my strongest fancy knitting technique. I’ve been wanting to try cabling with colors, so I finally gave it a shot.

This piece isn’t finished yet, but the cabling is coming out like I hoped it would.

Warping my back-strap loom with string that is longer than my legs still eludes me, so I will have to master that before I can improve my weaving more.

I’m also working on sourcing local fiber to use for whatever I try to sell. I think it would enhance the appeal of the product if I could say the yarn was made locally—or, even better, if the fiber was made locally and I spun it myself. Last year at a Dickens festival I attended, an alpaca ranch had a booth set up selling their fiber, yarn, and already-knitted items. I bought some fiber from them but hadn’t tried it yet. Now’s the time.

This top that this little skein was spun from is a combination of alpaca  dyed an aqua-greenish color and naturally black (with some gray) alpaca. If the alpaca I’d ordered from Paradise Fibers is nice, then this stuff is outstanding. I am definitely going to have to call/e-mail this farm to ask/wheedle them into selling me more fiber through the farm. (Normally they only sell it at festivals or their local yarn shop, and their LYS is hours away from me.)

I have some ideas for various knitting tutorials to make and more patterns to put up. Will have to make a mental note to myself to get that done in the future. Probably it won’t get done for quite some time unless someone reminds me. Frequently.

That’s an over-sized back-strap loom if I ever saw one. Surely all Na’vi looms are not that big. (Can you imagine how hard that thing would be to warp?) I’ll bet anything that (were the Na’vi real, of course) they’d do quite a bit of weaving on regular-sized back-strap looms. The book also states that the Na’vi weave items such as cloth, hammocks, mats, and hanging decorations. I imagine that cloth is not widely used for clothing—Mo’at, the most clothed character in Avatar, is wearing more beads than anything else.

The picture of a personal belongings rack seems to have an example of some weaving. It looks like there’s a decorative hanging and a strap for something.

The motifs also appear to be rather flowing and swirly, which makes sense to me considering the patterns that Neytiri paints on Jake’s skin when he is initiated into the Omaticaya.

One question remains for me, though—what colors and fibers would the Na’vi use to weave? I imagine that they would weave with plant fibers. The abundance of feathers for arrows implies that there are feathered creatures somewhere on Pandora, but the fauna we see in the movie are either reptiles, insects, or hairless mammals. Animal fibers seem out. Considering the varied and unique flora on Pandora, surely something has fibers that can be spun and woven.

That leaves colors, which are vague in the picture of the belongings rack, especially considering that we don’t know whom that rack belongs to. We can take a few hints from the things the characters wear. I would assume that the Na’vi do not weave much with blue, as it would be the same as us decorating our belongings with flesh tones. (And we do not see any blue clothes/decorations in the movie.) What we do see is a lot of red and a bit of yellow—and it seems to be reserved for important people. Eytukan and Mo’at both wear red and yellow.

So does Olo’eyktan, the leader of the Eastern Sea clan.

Considering again Jake’s initiation paint and the garment Mo’at wears for the soul transfers of Jake and Grace, white seems to be ceremonial.

Purple, in contrast, seems to be a common/everyday color. Neytiri’s flying leggings are purple.

I will have to ponder all these things and see if I can come up with some sort of Na’vi weaving when I get better with my loom.

So I made a loom. I made a loom out of a pack of dowel rods of various thicknesses, a knitting needle, scrap yarn, and a ribbon from some now-forgotten garment. Eventually I’ll probably want to find something better to use as a beater/sword than a size 6 knitting needle (the first one I grabbed) but for now the setup works, and it cost me less than $10. Did I mention it actually works? Did I mention it’s a blast?

Obviously, my weaving started out extremely ugly—and not just because of the colors of yarn I used. Nevertheless, I was thrilled simply because it actually worked. Here’s what the fabric looked like when I started at the beginning of the day.

As I practiced, I got better. Here’s what the fabric looked like when I cut it off at the end of the day.

I even managed to do a pattern, though it took a ton of concentration.

Later on I’ll put up a tutorial for actually making this loom. I want to get better with it first. I think Official Weaving Project #1 will have to be an actual back strap for the loom to replace the random ribbon.

And no, I have no idea how I managed to weave weft-faced on a back-strap loom. When I warped it again for another go with different colors, I found the weaving coming out warp-faced, the way fabric from this kind of loom usually is. My second go turned out pretty well, I think.

Over the weekend I made the first two swatches for my TKGA Masters Program Level 1. And by that, I mean I knitted and blocked swatch #1 twice and swatch #2 once, and I will probably be redoing both swatches at least twice before my final submission.

I’m already learning from this experience. It turns out I’ve been knitting wrong for the past five years or so—ever since I taught myself how.

When you wrap the yarn around the needle to make a stitch, you will either go clockwise or counter-clockwise. Either is fine. However, you must wrap the yarn the same direction when you knit and when you purl. I had been going clockwise to purl and counter-clockwise to knit. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that means that, before Saturday, every single knit stitch I had ever made was twisted.

Does it really matter? Not to the untrained eye, and not if you’re felting. But these will not be untrained eyes scrutinizing my swatches. Take a look at the two side-by-side. Both swatches have been blocked. The one on the right has the twisted stitches; the one on the left is knitted properly.

It should be fairly obvious that the rows of ribbing on the right (twisted) do not have nice, straight edges; they’re kind of crinkly. The rows of ribbing on the left (correct) do look straight and even.

It wasn’t a difficult problem to fix, but now I feel like a moron for never considering it.

Master of knitting, I’m using my strings!
Twisting my yarn, cabling things!
Swatching away for making something
Don’t call my name; I’m concentrating.

Master! Master!

Where’s the yarn that I’ve been after?

Master! Master!

BFL divine

After! After!

When I earn this much-sought-after

After! After!

Title I’ll hand-dyeeeeeeeee—

More yarn!

Okay, YOU try to come up with a better parody about knitting to Metallica’s Master of Puppets.

I recently discovered this: The Knitting Guild Association’s Master Knitter Program. I am starting on level 1 in hand-knitting with the intention of passing all three levels in time. It sounds fairly simple—make sixteen swatches and a hat. However, I know it will not be quite that easy. It has specific instructions that must be followed exactly, and each swatch has to be perfect. In addition to the swatching, there is also research and writing about knitting, which I am just as excited about.

What’s the point of all this, especially since the TKGA Master Knitter Program doesn’t actually certify you for anything? As the website says, even though it’s not an actual certification, it is a verification that you are a darn good knitter. It does give you clout when you are trying to sell patterns you’ve designed or teach knitting classes, both of which I want to do. It would also give me experience that would make it much easier to pass the Craft Yarn Council’s Certified Instructors Program, which is a multi-level knitting/crocheting teacher certification.

I am practically foaming at my mouth to get my instructions e-mailed to me, but it could take several days since it is sent by an actual person rather than an automated system. At first I wasn’t sure if I should undertake such a project just for knitting. I talked to some of the other Nerd Warriors about it, and one made a very good point. She asked me if I would be willing to put forward this kind of effort for some other sort of professional certification. Obviously the answer is yes. Since I do plan to do professional things with my knitting, it actually does make sense to pursue this program, especially since there’s no time limit.

In the meantime, I just finished testing the pattern for these socks for a designer on Ravelry.

I don’t think the pattern has been released yet, but once it is it’ll be called Adventurous Sole Socks. I’d definitely recommend it as a more interesting alternative than stockinette for those who are first learning to knit socks.

And here’s my version.

I’m still trying to decide if I should bother making the pattern available. I wonder if anyone would want it.