Knit R2-D2 Makes Knitting, Geekery Cool

I’m a bit of a geek, mostly thanks to my husband, and of course I’m a big old knitting geek, so I’ve absolutely loved seeing the pictures of the knit R2-D2 that was briefly on the streets of Bellingham, Wash., in honor of International Yarn Bombing Day last month.

Knitter Sarah Rudder told a local TV station she was inspired to knit the wooly robot because of a bunch of concrete barriers downtown that look like R2-D2. She measured the thing (technically called a bollard) and improvised a pattern, which can now be found on Ravelry. It takes about 1,200 yards of yarn and took her about three months to knit.

The robot made a brief appearance at the farmer’s market back in June, but Rudder says she hopes to make it regular event given the positive response people have had. Besides, what do you do with a giant R2 cozy in your house?

[Photo by Sarah Rudder.]

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I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

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