Thanks...sometimes spirit is the best we can do. But I'll certainly remember My First Knitting Project.
I totally forgot that I meant to mention this last time--I'm assuming most people here know about the DVD Easter Egg involving Jayne's hat on the Firefly discs? If not, put in disc 4, go to special features, scroll down to "Joss Sings the Firefly Theme", instead of selecting it hit the left arrow, which should make the squiggle up next to the picture on top turn yellow, then select/enter (however your DVD player terms it). It's hilarious, and gives a great view of the hat.
OK, to show what a good sport I am, I'm going to post a link to my sad little hat with my inferior yarn and inferior stitches. Now that I know what I'm doing and I'm not trying to knit a hat in twelve hours, I'm going to make a couple without dropped stitches or holes in general. Luckily, some non-knitting people weren't looking carefully and thought the holes were part of the design because they were sort of evenly spaced...
The pics funny because I kept trying to hold the camera out and get the whole thing without cutting off the pom on the top.
As to the hat in the film itself, I suspect that if it's not The Hat in actuality, it's The Hat in spirit--it's possible they auctioned it off for charity or it was simply sold as many props are or something along those lines. I guess we probably won't know definitely until it comes out on DVD and we either freeze-frame it or listen to Joss rambling his fabulous commentaries over it (when he remembers to talk--he seems to do better if he has an actor to talk with):
"Ah, yes, and there we have Jayne's cunning hat...ooo--there it goes....Adam felt we really needed to have the hat make an appearance for the fans, but we didn't have the hat anymore because we sold it, and so this was the closest thing we could find...not quite as cunning, but it was the best we could do...."
Anyhow, I'm dying to know if any of you crafty people are also academically-minded folks, and if any of you were planning on presenting at the Whedonfest '06 conference that Slayage is sponsoring. It seems like someone ought to do a presentation on the cunning hat. Rhonda and David seem somewhat open to slightly unusual presentations...perhaps a short presentation on the hat and a how-to workshop? Anyway, here's the link. I presented at the '04 Slayage conference and it was a fabulous event.
Emisanboo--I PMed you with the somewhat rambly details.
If anyone else wants me to do the same (I'm thinking particularly people who haven't seen it yet and may want to know when to look while still avoiding major spoilers), PM me and I'll PM you back. Though I'm attending a wedding today and may not be able to reply until tomorrow (doesn't help anyone who wants to figure it out for tonight, I guess).
Thanks, folks, for helpful links and encouragement. For the record, apparently I chose a bad illustration to try to teach myself to knit with in the beginning, and mayhem ensued. Much twisting and what were probably half hitches. My friend who knits set me halfway straight Thursday morning and the rest of the way Thursday evening before we packed up her kitchen for her move today. (I knew it was bad when she picked up my project, inspected the stitches closely, and laughed.) After she showed me what I did "almost exactly perfect" with my stitches, I was too tired and frustrated to realize that I could keep the live end of the yarn on the right sides for the ribbing by going over the TOP of the needle.
This morning when I started in around 8:30am, I had only the casting (version 4.0--the only thing I actually did right on my own..and redid right, and etc.) and maybe ten stitches tops. I managed to complete the hat in time for my husband to wear it to the show tonight...well, when I held up my quarter-ear-flapped hat and convinced David we should go to the 8:55 show instead of the 6:30. So a fool who's never knit a proper stitch in her life can build Rome in a day, though typing sure feels funny now. It's not entirely pretty--dropped a few stitches along the way--but it served the purpose , which was to be the only cunning hat at the late show in Oshkosh tonight. I plan to make one for myself, take my time, and do it entirely right. And still be able to type properly.
Incidentally, the hat made a cameo in the film. I know some people here probably saw the Can't-Stop-the-Signal showing--did somebody already post that the hat was in the film? Don't blink, though--you'll miss it.
Thanks again, for posting the pattern and helping out. And the action figure pic--totally fabulous!
Oh....this is my very first knitting project, because my husband was searching for a Jayne-like hat desperately enough to go to a thrift store without me (he HATES the thrift store). I'm trying to follow the general pattern on the top of the third page, with the exception of me using just double points instead of a curved needle, too (my knitting friend's over-the-phone advice, since none of the local stores seemed to stock the right size and length of curved), and it looks like it's gone horribly wrong. The cable casting went swimmingly both times I did it (the first time I started the 1K1P I tried to take out a stitch and wound up with the whole thing unravelling instead), and I was extremely careful about not getting it twisted (the yarn store lady was very helpful about explaining that before I left the store), but after the first row of 1K1P was done, it looked all funny--some of the stitches looked like the neat stitches on the online beginner help sites, but some of them looked funny--like in the eighties when you hooked two jelly bracelets together to make one larger one with one color each circling half your wrist (yeah, I know--technical knot names, other than slip knots, not my thing).....as I've been trying to put the next row on, it's been difficult and it doesn't look pretty. I have to start all over again, don't I?
Can anyone recommend easily available, quick-reference, idiot-proof help? It's not that I'm an idiot....I learned how to change my own alternator over the phone and can design and sew quilts from absolutely nothing, but despite my uber-Joss-Whedon fan status, I seem to have no affinity for these pointy sticks.....
Perhaps the whole problem is that I had some sort of delusion that reports of 'easy' would mean I could manage it between today (which seems to have been wasted), tomorrow between my classes, and Friday while my hubby worked to surprise him with said completed project before the show......there's really no prayer of that for me as a first timer, is there?
(Oh--and I had to go with worsted weight acrylic--I don't know it that makes any difference. I am highly allergic to wool...even 15% makes me break out...and I figured that my first project would look slightly less than shiny so there didn't seem to be any point in buying the $10 a skein stuff.)
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