The Mario Scarf

Hello, Nintendo Power Readers!

2008-10-27T00:42:00.004-04:00

A big thanks to Andrew Hayward of Nintendo Power magazine for writing a fantastic little profile of the Mario Scarf. Obviously, this is the first time this particular location has been updated in a long time.

You'll find the new home of the Mario Scarf at:
http://themarioscarf.cassiecsmith.com

Enjoy!

New Website!

2008-08-25T13:27:00.004-04:00

Hi everyone! I'm excited to announce that I'm moving this blog over to my personal domain. I went with WordPress and jumped over a few hurdles to get things moving in the right direction. My personal crafting blog isn't nearly as polished as I'd like, but I've moved all the posts from the Mario Scarf Blog to its new home and it's ready to roll!

If you subscribe, please remove this address and add http://themarioscarf.cassiecsmith.com. From now on I'll posting over there and if you don't update your subscription feed address then you won't see anything new.

There may be some layout/design tweaks and changes through out the week until I get everything just right and as I learn more about WordPress. Anyone advice on design or using WordPress is greatly appreciated.

Christmas in August & New Site

2008-08-22T14:00:00.006-04:00

After working 14 hours yesterday plus a two hour round-trip commute, I was exhausted when I got home, but waiting for me was a package from Angelika! Six beautiful skeins of "Blue Topaz" Cascade 220. I did a little happy dance (Jason started laughing at me) and ripped open the box. My little happy dance turned into a full-blown victory dance when I saw the yarn and that it MATCHES!
I don't know if Angelika knows about this scarf or blog, but I owe her BIG time for matching the yarn and taking the time to personally make sure my order was well put together. We almost had real-time email conversations about finding this yarn and one has to appreciate that kind of customer service.

Currently I'm working on a new website. I'll be transferring the Mario Scarf Blog over there as well as adding a general craft/personal blog. I like Blogger, but I need a little bit more control over various elements of the blog. Stay tuned in the next week or so to see what happens...

I leave you this afternoon with pictures from my journey into nature at the Chattahoochee Nature Center this morning.

Success! and Drupal Help, Please!

2008-08-19T10:53:00.005-04:00

Yessss! Angelika has matched the blue for the scarf (turns out it's #8906- kudos to those who guess right) and will be mailing me SIX skeins tomorrow. I can't tell you how happy this makes me! I'll probably be able to start work again on the scarf on Friday or Saturday and I can't wait. It's been fun working on my other projects (I was able to set up an Etsy shop with the free time), but it's so sad to look at the scarf and know there's nothing I can do with it. You can look forward to a major picture update this weekend when I get some work done!

As for the help, is anyone familiar with Drupal websites? I need help setting up a Drupal site on my server. I've used Drupal before, but it was set up for me by one of my boyfriend's computer science buddies. I really liked the easy to update format of the site and want to transfer this website to something a bit more design-flexible. So if anyone out there can help, please email me.

Have a wonderful week!

Biding My Time

2008-08-16T23:13:00.009-04:00

I'm still here, promise. Things haven't been too busy and I've actual had a couple of days vacation while the family I nanny for this summer is out of town. A wonderful woman name Angelika is helping me match my yarn at her shop and while I wait on that, I've been working on other projects and enjoying my time off.

Went to a Braves game with my dad on Thursday. We lost horribly to the Cubs, but we had great seats above third base and enjoyed some baseball stadium hot dogs.

The Cubs' pitcher hit one of the Braves players and a huge fight almost broke out on the field. I've never seen Bobby Cox hustle so fast from the dugout. I didn't even think that man could run.

I broke out the Gocco printer the other night. I'd been saving the last screen I had for a great idea and I finally got one. I found a great image online of hands doing a a knit stitch and decided to make some stationery. I'm still learning how to do layers with the Gocco, but I'm getting better.

This is how the cards turned out. Not bad, eh? Of course I bought green and blue cards to use because everything I make these days ends up being green or blue. Avocado green is one of my all-time favorite colors.

I also tested out Gocco's Riso ink on Shrinky Dink plastic. It smells a little while it's cooking, but it worked just fine. My test was done on clear Shrinky Dink plastic, but I printed about 8 more images on opaque white to shrink tomorrow on my last day off.

Here's one of the blue cards I made with the Shrinky Dink version. Love this color blue.

I also got the chance this week to continue work on the sock yarn I've been spinning. I bought all this fiber back in May and having been working on this on and off since. Here's what it looks like after stretching out for a few weeks.

Mmm, twisty goodness!

And this is the bag made from Noro wool that I plan to felt tomorrow. I looooove the wonderful stripey colors in Noro yarns. I already made my boyfriend socks from their line of sock yarns and he really likes the stripes, too. I can't wait to see how this bag turns out.

Just Curious...

2008-08-13T09:13:00.004-04:00

Who's going to Dragon*Con this year? If so, any crafty people want to meet up at the Con or somewhere else in town?

Slight Retraction and Full Scarf Pic

2008-08-12T21:40:00.006-04:00

A few posts ago I said that the scarf was over 8 feet long. It's actually just over 6 feet long. Let's chalk the two foot error to my poor measuring and math skills. I laid out the scarf on the floor today and used a rigid tape measure to get the real length. I'd had my doubts for a few days and wonder why I even posted the original length in the first place, but I think was excited. So, please accept my apologies about my misleading information and maybe someone out there can do the math and figure out how long this thing will end up being.

The pictures were taken for a popular video gaming magazine that I don't want to reveal until the issue comes out. I'm sure their piece on it will take up a fourth of a page, but my boyfriend's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I told him the name of the magazine, so I'm going to wait. It might not even be in the issue, but we only have to wait until late September/early October to find out. I took the pics exclusively for this magazine and I'm only going to post one, but I wanted it to be one of the whole scarf thus far. So here you go:

Obviously this wouldn't be the one used for the magazine as the WALL is glaring at me on the left, but you can see the whole darn thing.

A lot of flack I get in threads around the net focuses on the lack of detail. Like I said in the FAQ post (a link to it can be found on the right) I plan on adding all the details in at the end. And it looks all wavy and weird because I used painter's tape to make it stick to the carpet so that the sides wouldn't curl under. But yeah, there it is in all it's scarfy glory.

There's good news.... aaaaand bad news

2008-08-11T21:02:00.004-04:00

The good news: JASON IS HOME FROM JAPAN! He's been gone for two weeks livin' it up in the motherland of gaming and I'm so happy that's he home. So yay.

Onto the bad news.... the yarn came in the mail today. I ordered four different shades of blue. None of them match. I put the colors on them so you could see that although they look similar in the images from Cascade, they look different in real life. So I'm back to the drawing board here.

And now I return the yarn I got and buy 4 more colors in the quest for the ultimate Mario Scarf Blue. New Knitters, beware of my mistakes and SAVE YOUR YARN LABELS!

Crafting a Blogroll

2008-08-10T22:51:00.003-04:00

I need your help again. I'd like to make a blogroll on the right that includes the blogs/sites that posted an article about my blog. Please comment or email me where you found out about this project so that I can give everyone credit and thanks they deserve.

PS: Email me with your blog and a quick description to add to a seperate blog roll.

Meeting Crafty Friends in the Neighborhood

2008-08-10T16:28:00.013-04:00

A big shout-out to Dave, Amy, Lori, Wendy, San, and Kevin who met up at Joe's Coffee in East Atlanta to talk, craft, and drink coffee. Joe's is my new favorite coffee place since moving to East Atlanta- they have one of the best cafe au laits I've ever had and I was born in New Orleans. That's sayin' something.

A variety of crafts were represented this afternoon. Lori busted out her animal quilt and was hand-stitching the border.

Wendy started making a felt corndog and Amy worked on a huge crochet afghan throw. Dave busted out all these awesome fabrics (he's got a hook-up with a company that makes heavy-duty bags, or something along those lines) and cool Japanese pattern books.

Dave took some pictures when I unfurled the scarf onto a table and that's when we realized we both had sweet, sweet Nikons. So we took a picture of each other taking a picture of each other. Like cool people do in such situations.

This is the only picture you get of me because I look weird in all pictures. Maybe I'll get one of my photog friends to take a decent picture of me with the scarf sometime. Until then, bask in the glory of my ridiculously huge forehead. (By the way, this picture belongs to Dave Coustan.)

The wait for the yarn is excruciating, which is why I love yarn stores so much - instant gratification. I'm doing my best to be patient. I've been spinning yarn to keep my hands busy before frogging furiously. I ordered several colors in hopes of finding a match. I mean, the colors might look the same on the computer, but it won't matter until I see them in person side by side.

Also, I'm hoping most of you know about this already, but if you have a Google account, you can read your blog list in Google Reader. You just copy and paste the pages and will get the feeds whenever new posts are made. I'm sure a lot of you already know about this, but a friend mentioned that some people don't. It makes blog-reading a streamlined experience, especially if you read a gazillion blogs like I do.

It's back to the daily grind tomorrow and for most Georgians public school starts tomorrow as well. If you have anything to do with that, hope you have a great day! My boyfriend has his law school orientation tomorrow after he gets off the plane from Japan so think happy thoughts for him so that he can stay awake.

And for the people who won a little prize from me about the knitted binary message, here's a little preview of your prize package:

Nintendo Knitters Rule

2008-08-09T23:34:00.003-04:00

While I wait for my shipment of yarn to arrive Monday or Tuesday, I've been searching the web for cool Nintendo knitting out there on the web. I think these people deserve as much attention as I've gotten, because, hey, they did it first! This post doesn't cover nearly all the cool stuff that's out there and I'm sure you will all post comments with more stuff, but here are a few things I've been sent and have found.

Super Mario Felted Bag: Felted handbag showing the end of level 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers. They also used Cascade 220 and made a list of the colors they used (I need to do that, too!)
Chain Chomp Hat: Considering the Chain Chomp is spherical, this is perfect for a hat.
Goomba Hat: My boyfriend asked me to knit this for him, too. Maybe when I get time off I'll whip it up because it's so cool. They have a great graphical pattern on the site so you can make it, too!
Super Mario Character Scarf: This knitter included a lot of Super Mario characters in this scarf. Very cool.
Nintendo Baby Blanket: Oh man, this is a tough one. Makes me want a little nerdy baby to snuggle in this blanket. (By the way, have you seen any of the Level 1 Human onesie?)
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out Scarf: This chick made this awesome scarf with a pixelated Mike Tyson. All your nerdz0rs can drool over her Goomba tshirt underneath, too. (Yikes, I originally wrote TKO on here, but let me correct it before all you l337 hax0rs get on my case about getting the name right!)

I've been thinking about getting another tattoo lately. Either nerdy or crafty, can't decide. I'll probably end up getting multiple tattoos in the future because I have a lot of ideas. Definitely something Nintendo-related (maybe to commemorate this scarf) or a drop spindle for my love of spinning yarn. Anyone reading this blog have a nerdy or crafty tattoo? I'd love to see it and make a post about these kinds of tattoos next week. Email me a pic and some background and I'll pick a few to post.

Color Clarification

2008-08-08T19:54:00.006-04:00

I got a lot of votes for #8891, which looks identical in the Cascade image. It's an obvious choice for most of you, but I'm worried that the color on the computer and the color in real life won't match. So I went ahead and ordered a few colors in hopes of finding a match. So until then I frog. The shop I'm ordering from online offers Priority shipping so hopefully the yarn will arrive by Tuesday and I'll take more pictures.

Until then, I have an assignment for you. Search the web for other Nintendo knitters and send me links and pictures. I want to give props to others who are combining the world of 8-bit and yarn. I've already seen a few sites floating around the web and I'll post a few tomorrow.

For tonight, here's something else geeky that lends itself to knitting: binary! I had great plans for this swatch that I made, but for some reason I stopped. All you get is the binary section, but you can see that it works similar to knitting 8-bit images. In fact, I designed this out on graph paper first with each square equally a knit stitch. I used Rowan Cotton Glace, which is a firm cotton and sometimes hard to work with, but the stitch definition is lovely.

I'll make a little prize for whoever translates this first! (That's a zero starting the last line and a one ending the row.)

Losing my mind!

2008-08-08T16:10:00.008-04:00

(FYI: Comments are now closed on this post. Thanks for all your help!)

For the love of Pete, finding the color blue I used is driving me up the freaking wall! The nearest yarn store to me stopped carrying the color and I don't think there are any other yarn stores around Atlanta carrying a huge collection of Cascade 220. I've been staring at Cascade's 220 website all day desperately trying to match the color, but I don't think my screen colors are very accurate. So I'm buying several different colors and hoping for the best.

If you're new to knitting, don't make the same mistake I did! Keep the labels on the skeins you buy for future reference. They have the color number on there and the dye lot so you can match it to other skeins. I do this now, but when I started this scarf last year I threw a lot of caution to the wind.

Dear sweet readers, please help me match the color to the Cascade 220 colors! Below are two pictures of my scarf taken with natural lighting. Hopefully showing both shots will give you a good view of the color.

Here are pictures from Cascade's website . Please comment with the number you think matches the best. Thank you in advance!

And just for reference, the color I bought that doesn't match is #9455.

Atlanta Meet Up

2008-08-08T09:49:00.002-04:00

By no means do I feel qualified to start something like this, but if there's interest, why not?

I received a few emails about meeting up in Atlanta somewhere in the next week or so. My work schedule is kind of crazy at the moment, but I am free on Sunday afternoon. We could meet up in my neighborhood of East Atlanta. Someone suggested Joe's Coffee and I think it's the perfect spot.

Let me preface all this by saying, crazy stalkers stay away! The worst thing about anonymity is that people don't know you, don't know what you look like or act like and sort of, make up their version of who you are and get a little carried away. I worked in radio (WRAS, if you're an Atlantan) for four years and it never ceased to amaze me how people would project some kind of image onto me. One guy even said he liked to imagine me in lingerie during one of my shows, eek!. Seriously, anyone who knits such a geeky project as I is surely not fodder for stalking, so don't be a creep .

But if you're cool, please come! Let's say around 2-2:30ish on Sunday? I need to grab lunch beforehand and have enough time to get over there from my morning job. You'll know who I am- short geeky-looking girl with a giant yarn mess in a bag. Yes, I will pull out the scarf to its entire length and yes, you can touch it. (Okay, now I'm getting creepy!) Bring your needles/hooks if you care to and a few bucks for the best coffee in town. Oh, and sometimes they have peanut butter pie.

To frog or not to frog?

2008-08-07T19:08:00.007-04:00

In honor of all the brouhaha brought upon by the Internet today, and because I don't have to get up at 5 AM for work in the morning, I decided to pour myself a snakebite, which consists of half beer of your choice (in my case, Sam Adams Summer Ale) and half hard cider (Woodchuck Granny Smith Draft Cider). Naturally or such an occasion as this, I used the geek glass I got for my boyfriend. It's a shame, but this is the only picture I could take in my craft room without an insane mess in the background.

Enough beverage discussion, let's get down to business, shall we?

Charlie-cat says, "Stop reading blog comments and fetch me some tuna, woman!"

Here's a better picture of where I'm at and how different the two blues are. I really hate the new color. Okay, I don't hate it and I'll probably use it for something else, but it's really quite embarrassing. The first color matches the actual color blue in the game so well. I'm on a mission to find the original blue somewhere on the interwebs and order it. I was debating whether or not to frog (rip it... rippit, rippit- sounds like a frog) all the new blue, but now I know I need to. It's just... not right.

Tomorrow it's off to Knitch to match the yellow for the question blocks and to get more white for clouds. Getting all this attention and not being able to work on this scarf is maddening.

And for a great geeky friend Allison who wanted to see what the back looks like, here ya go:

Other random things, hello to people in and around Atlanta! One blogger, Glue & Glitter, said she kinda wants to meet me. Well, hey girl! Let's start a geek-knitting circle in the ATL!

I attempted to measure the damn thing tonight and it came to approximately 99 inches long up to the line with the new blue. That's a little over 8 feet long! Holy mother...

Again, thanks to all the posts around the net (I did a little Google search earlier). It's so exciting to have people following this and cheering me on, but seriously, no pressure or anything, right?

FAQ/Information Post

2008-08-07T18:19:00.006-04:00

My first post on this blog outlined most of the background to this scarf, but I wanted to keep a running list of questions I've gotten about the scarf and stuff in general.

What materials are you using?
All of the yarn is Cascade 220, which is 100% Peruvian highland wool. It's not as soft as other wools, but it has great stitch definition and a multitude of colors, which made matching yarn colors to the game colors quite easy.

I'm currently using the aluminum US 8/5mm needles I started the scarf with, but plan to switch to some less-slippery needles soon (they were being used in another project).
This looks so complicated! How long have you been knitting?
I initially learned how to knit in high school. Knitting and crocheting became popular one year that I was in color guard (shout out to NHS marching band, what what) and so I bought a book from Michaels. I stopped for about two or three years and retaught myself with videos from KnittingHelp.com. That website has taught me EVERYTHING I know about knitting. I learn from demonstration and practice and watching videos was extremely helpful.

In particular, the video about intarsia knitting helped me so much when I was just starting this scarf. And even though this scarf is all stockinette stitch (knit front side, purl back side), it still drives me batty. I truly believe a beginner knitter could accomplish something like this.
What type of camera do you have?
I take all current pictures with a Nikon D40. I can't remember what some of the older pictures were taken with, but obviously the D40 is superior to whatever I was using.
The scarf looks pretty basic right now/Where's Mario?/Where are the details?
I love Cascade 220, but it's a little too thick to knit a wearable scarf with every single detail knitted into this scarf. Like I said in the first post, my initial layout was crazy wide. My plan is to go back and add details on top of what is there. Mario will be added later because I haven't quite decided how I want to place him. Someone suggested that I make him detachable so that he can "jump" around the scarf. Who knows. When I finish the length of the scarf I will put in all the details: question marks, coins, goombas, turtles, etc.
Is there a pattern for this?
There is no pattern for this scarf. In hindsight a little more planning might have helped, but I'm really bad about planning stuff out anyway. (I mean, come on, I majored in English. Do think I ever did a paper more than 48 hours in advance?) Using a map from Ian Albert's website I've been "free-handing" the image.

Honestly, I can't think of any particular reasons why I chose to do this other than laziness and because I had to shrink the sky part of the image. It's frustrating because I don't have a set way of doing clouds or bushes (although several commenters have pointed out that clouds and bushes are the same, just different colors) and it leaves a little to be desired in the area of consistency.

To those who want me to give them my pattern... sorry. Try knitting a swatch with a few of the main elements from the image for practice and go from there. You'll be surprised at how easy it is to translate 8-bit images to knitting.
Do you plan on making more Mario scarves to sell?
First off, do you think I have the time to make another one of these? Buy me a knitting machine and then we'll talk.

Secondly, I'm certain that it's illegal to sell something with copyrighted characters on it without permission from the owner of the image. I realize people go ahead and do it all the time, but I live with the biggest video gaming geek in the world who's about to go to law school for intellectual property law. Best that I not do anything like that any time soon.

What else does the Internet want to know? I think I covered some of the main concerns, but I'm just one person and I'm sure I missed something. The email address for this blog is themario scarf [at] gmail [dot] com. Drop me a line, fool.

Whoa.

2008-08-07T14:30:00.003-04:00

Um, hi. So this morning I had about 200 profile views to my credit. Now I have over 700. Yipes.

First off, thank you to all the great blogs posting about this. Little ole me isn't used to so much internet attention, but THANK JEBUS it's for something good. It's so awesome that my favorite magazine Craft posted this and even cooler that smart blogs (um, hello, Mental Floss anyone?) are talking about it, too. I better double check my grammar...

Secondly, people have started asking a few questions about things that I haven't covered in any posts yet so I think I'll have to make an FAQ post or something of that nature pretty soon. If you have questions, you can email them to themarioscarf [at] gmail [dot] com. Also, all you experienced knitters out there, feel free to offer advice. I've already gotten a few tips that I think will help, but I'm still a relative n00b in the knitting world.

Well, that's all I can say at the moment. I've been working as a nanny over the summer and blogging during the day comes few and far between. I'll post something about the actual scarf later this evening.

Holy Knit One, Purl Two, Batman!

2008-08-06T17:59:00.005-04:00

Becky made a blog post about the scarf on the Craftzine blog this afternoon... sweet! This may require a celebratory Sam Adams summer brew and a spin on the Wii. (Dear Sweet Boyfriend, if you happen to read this over in Japan, I did not actually drink beer while playing with your toys. I just thought about it. By the way, your Jameson shirt is on the Craftzine blog!)

Finally, pictures!

2008-08-05T06:15:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned last night, the pics today show my "beauty and the beast" method of hauling around my scarf materials. My mom gave me this beautiful Amy Butler knitting bag last Christmas and it alone is pretty hefty. It's gorgeous, though. I'm a huge fan of aqua blue and light green.

What a yummy looking swirl.

But wait! What is THAT? A plastic freezer bag?? GAHHH! It's amazing how much one can fit into one of those things. Early last year I organized by separating my projects into these big plastic freezer bags. But the Mario Scarf grew, and grew, and grew...

Holy guacamole. This is sad.

Here's the color yellow I can't find. We moved into our new house in late May and some of my craft supplies seem to have gone missing... And new rule for myself: never take pictures at night with fake lighting. Blech!

Another boring update

2008-08-04T21:43:00.002-04:00

Holy Moly. I've been trying to upload five pictures for about ten minutes now and I'm obviously not having any success. I was so excited to have a picture post for everyone tonight, but rats! Skunked again!

Anyway, the post would've showed my "beauty and the beast" method of carrying my scarf and materials around. My life is so crazy right now that I haven't had time to organize this project. I'm missing two colors of Cascade 220 from our move to the new house in May. This post was to show you why I'm stuck at the moment- I need yellow for a question block, but I can't find it.

Hopefully Blogger will fix itself by the morning and I can make a decent post. Sorry!

Hello, I'm here, I promise!

2008-08-02T10:32:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted all week. Life's been crazy and I left my camera at one of my jobs that I go to sparingly (don't worry it's locked up), but I get it back tonight so I'll post pictures then.

I've gotten lots of compliments and exuberant reactions when people see my scarf out and about. I think so far most people are astonished by the length. It freaks me out every time I lay it out, too. Can't wait until it's at full length. I wonder how long it will get. Maybe I should measure it now and try to work it out in some math equation.

I Love my Geek

2008-07-28T18:44:00.004-04:00

My boyfriend inspires the best of the geek craft I have to offer. Check out the Valentine's Day card I made him this year.

Nothing like hexidecimal codes and an allusion to a cult classic internet video.

Who remembers when the "All Your Base is Belong to Us" video first came out on the interwebz? I think I was in middle or high school... I feel so old now considering that must have been like 10 years ago.

Shrinky Dink Love

2008-07-27T16:12:00.007-04:00

I dabble in a lot of different crafts although knitting and spinning yarn are my main passions. When the Shrinky Dink craze came back last year I got really excited. I did Shrinky Dinks back in the early 90s when I was a kid and was eager to try my hand at them again. Addictive! Aaaand, so easy to nerd out with! (Please forgive the terrible pictures- they were taken last year with a horrible camera. Now I have a fantastic camera so all future pictures should be somewhat decent!)

In honor of my favorite show Futurama, it's Leela and Nibbler.

In honor of my favorite food- sushi hairclips.

In honor of my tattoo and knitting!

Tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. (Yes, it hurt... bad.)

Other Geek Craft Projects

2008-07-27T13:51:00.004-04:00

Apple logo hat for my boyfriend when he worked at Apple in California.

The stitched Apple logo.

Space Invaders hat.

Update on the Color Disparity

2008-07-27T13:40:00.003-04:00

Excuse the poor lighting and set up of the pics- I took them at work this morning. They show the color difference well and I can't decide how bad this is. I spent a good chunk of change at the yarn store yesterday to buy several skeins of the new blue so I'm wondering if I could sell it somewhere and order the first color online. Anyone need some light denim colored Cascade 220?

Jason says he doesn't mind the difference and just wants it no matter what it looks like. But come on, I don't know any crafters who aren't perfectionists about their work. I have to trust his judgement and just go with it. Maybe once I get further into it I won't be staring at the line right there.

Things I'm Thinking About This Morning

2008-07-27T07:23:00.002-04:00

With the huge response I got on the LiveJournal group craftgrrl, I think I have a responsibility to make this the most awesome scarf that ever was. Cooler than the binary message scarf I started last year. But it makes me freak out a little, too, and I started stressing over a few things this morning before I head off to work.

Why didn't I knit the scarf in a fingering or sock weight? Then it's be nice and small and not the massive behemoth I have to haul around. It would be easier to manage the intarsia without heavy balls of yarn dangling off the back and the screw ups would be less noticeable.

The new color I got for the blue sky is really off. Yipes. Do I frog it and order the right color online or do I keep going with the new color? Picture posted soon so you can all see what I'm talking about.

But in lighter thoughts, I think I'm going to post some of my other geek projects later this morning or afternoon. Geek craft permeates a lot of what I make. I hardly make things for myself and most of the time I want to make something awesome for my boyfriend. And since his level of geekery surpasses that of most, I'm always trying to one up (no pun intended) myself and come up with better projects.

Sadly though since I started my summer job, I've been too busy/tired to knit much. I've been spinning yarn like a champ, but diving into a knitting project is so unappealing most of the time. I nanny ten hours a day and get about a one and a half to two hour break when both of the kids are sleeping in the afternoon. That's my time to eat lunch and chill and most of the time I end up taking a nap, too. So having the concentration and energy needed to knit anything intricate is a challenge. But I think with the motivation Jason gave me this week, I don't think I'll put off working on this scarf.

A Trip to the LYS

2008-07-26T15:31:00.006-04:00

My favorite Atlanta knitting shop Knitch is having a huge sale this weekend. I ran out of the blue I'm using in the sky (Cascade 220 brand) so I clipped off a little bit of the end and took it with me to the sale. I also can't find my white skein so I was hoping to get that, too (I can't believe how much stuff I misplaced in our move to the new house!).

I went straight to the store's Cascade section and behold, none of the blue I needed or any white. Jason helped me find a similar color blue and the woman at the shop said either Knitch or Cascade was discontinuing the shade I've been using. Considering where I'm at in the scarf and how much farther I have to go, a slight shade change probably won't make a huge difference. But I'm still skeptical. I haven't started with the new color yet, but I took some pictures by the window to gauge the color difference.

It's definitely different. But not outrageously different. Different enough to notice, but still works for the color of the sky. I don't know... I'm picky about colors and details, but Jason said he thought it will work. Hope so... I bought five skeins of it!

Here are pics from last night with Jason helping out as a model.

Oh Lordy, this thing is already really long... and I'm not even a third of the way in yet!

I've gotten to the first major jump in the level. See the hole on the right?

Pictures: In the beginning

2008-07-26T15:23:00.004-04:00

The Mario Scarf

2008-07-26T15:03:00.004-04:00

Welcome to my blog about my quest- my quest to knit the entire first level map of Super Mario Brothers. This first post will outline the reasons for investing so much time, energy, and money into quite possibly one of the nerdiest endeavors undertaken.

The Super Mario Brother scarf was sadly not my own idea. I give all credit to my sweet, super nerdy boyfriend Jason. Jason is a big time video gamer and has an affinity for old school Nintendo games. Oddly, though, I got an Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES, the original Nintendo console) before he did as a kid and started playing Super Mario Brothers (or SMB) paired with Duck Hunt waaaay before he did. With the recent proliferation of geek craft and geek knitting, Jason suggested that I try my hand at something nerdy. He'd seen some Nintendo-themed knitting projects pop up around the web and got the idea of knitting the map of a game level.

SMB levels are linear maps and the Mario and Luigi characters move from left to right from start to the castle at the end. Also, the images in these games are designed in the 8-bit fashion and look like they were drawn using graph paper. Each knitting stitch can replicate a square in the image making knitted 8-bit images look like they're supposed to.

My original design of the scarf was HUGE. I used the map image from Ian-Albert.com and put it into a knitting pattern generator and it was due to be something like 90 stitches across. A quick swatch test of that width was so big I knew I'd run out of yarn fast and it would never be wearable. Using the map image from Ian-Albert.com, I decided to "free-hand" the scarf. It's not exactly to scale as the ratio of sky to surface in the map is big, but it looks fine in its knitted form.

Needless to say, though, knitting this scarf got to be daunting. I tried to put in at least an hour of work a day for the first month or so and was moving along, but not getting very far. I'm using stockinette stitch and the intarsia method to add the bushes, question blocks, and clouds. I plan on stitching in the details when I finish the body of the scarf. As much as I love the meditative state that stockinette can put a knitter in, it's been a little tough on the hands. So for awhile I didn't touch the scarf at all.

Then Jason and I were talking about our future. We both know that we want to get married, but as Jason will be attending law school in fall 2008, I'm still looking for a teaching job, and Jason just bought a house, having a wedding seems a little bit out of our budget for the time being; however, we're open to the possibility of getting engaged soon. Jason decided to to offer me a deal- when the Mario Scarf is finished then he will propose. Motivation at last!

Now I'm back on the needles chugging away at the scarf, taking pictures, exploring my passion of knitting and fiber, and of course, all things geeky on this journey. If you have questions, suggestions, comments or words of encouragement, I hope you'll drop me a line!