Q is for...

Quixotic

Ravelry icons

                                                                                    
Our favourite knitting site is a host for many wondrous things, one of my (many) favourites being the quixotic nature of some words... (I use this in its 'whimsical' and 'fanciful' sense.)  If, when conversing on the forums, you type the words 'cup of coffee, cake, killer rabbit (there's a long story there, but not for the telling right here) and ice cream, to name but four, the magic of Ravelry then depicts the words in a delightful little icon which follows your text.  It is very amusing, and the 'cake' especially has come to mean a lot to the members of a certain CPaAG...

I decided I liked these little symbols so much that I'd try to turn them into 3D knitted representations... I found patterns that I could adapt for three of them, and so determined was I to make the fourth, I made it up myself!

But I run ahead of myself...

Firstly, may I present unto you the ice cream:

um, ice cream...

Notice the waffle cone and the blueberry and strawberry scoops! Heh! This is from the marvellous pattern by Marcie Nishioka, called 'Scooped' of all things!

Next we have some cake. This is a very important part of the 'Very Longest Thread' in the 'Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group' on Ravelry. Newbies are asked for cake when they post for the first time and it occasionally incurs a bit of confusion along the lines of:

"Cake?" 

"How can I bring you cake?" 

"Oh. I see." 

"When I type 'cake' the icon turns up and you all get Rav cake..." 

"D'oh"

etcetera...

(There's a small possibility that I'm re-living my first postings on the VLT for your delectation right here and now...) 

Childish? Well, yes, but good, clean childishnessy-type fun!

And so: cake.

cake (like you'd never guess it by now...)

Now, I don't know exactly what kind of cake the Ravelry cake is supposed to be - it has a cream-coloured sponge, pink icing and filling and some cream on the top edge...  For me, I think I shall go with a Victoria sponge with a strawberry filling and fresh double cream piped around the edge of the pink icing on top.  And now I'm getting slightly peckish...  This cake is only slightly altered from the 'Let them knit cake' pattern by Hannah Kaminsky.

Then we have the killer rabbit.  Um. Well. How to explain... It involves cake, or the lack thereof...

Once upon a time in a Ravelry Land not far away, cake stopped being followed by its icon. Gnashings of teeth, howls of frustration and tears of despair ensued (indulge me, people, I'm writing a story!) causing an outpouring of grief on a main board.  The multitudes were uneasy, scared and lonely for the lack of the pretty pink frosted cake but were delighted to find out that in fact the cake was being guarded by a killer rabbit. I think Casey, one of the founders of Ravelry and the code monkey, was drinking rather too much coffee that day. But anyhoo, the killer rabbit and its cute little bunny icon made it onto our pages, and therefore onto my knitting needles...

watch out for the fangs...

This little beastie was designed by MeganAnn and called 'rabbit'. (And I shall hug him and squeeze him and call him George...)

Lastly I decided I wanted to make a cup of coffee, as... well, it's as important to me as it is to the list of icons... But could I find a pattern?  Um, well, yes actually, I could, but it was a crochet pattern, and I can't crochet my way out of a wet paper bag... So I searched again but to no avail.  Well, thunk I, maybe I can just do one myself...  It can't be THAT hard, right? RIGHT?

cup of coffee (oh, for a latte icon!)

Actually, RIGHT! Heh. 3 stitches cast onto 3 dpns, m1 on each stitch for the first round, and k1, m1 for the next few, a couple of purl rows for the base of the cup, then k1 and m1 whenever I thought it needed to curve out a bit more... Then a length of browny i-cord for the coffee part and a small i-cord for the handle and Bob's your Daddy's Bro!

And so you have it. My own quirky versions of some Rav icons...

huzzah for arty-farty shots!

(Ah, pants - Q could've been for quirky...)