Geekend, Wiikend

No worries, no spoilers
So. It's over. No more Harry Potter, my friends. Sure, we'll have the movies, and possibly some sort of World of Harry Potter Encyclopedia thing if J.K. decides to let it be so, but mostly, it's over. I liked the last book a lot, and I'm sure that several re-readings will make me like it even more, because the shock of knowing it's over after I finished it the first time may have clouded my enjoyment just a wee bit. Luckily, it is the nature of fandom that our loved ones never really leave us, and I'm sure that Harry Potter is going to remain present in our pop-culture, and then our subculture, for many years to come. There will be conventions, folks, oh yes, there will be conventions. That is not to say that I will attend any of them, but I'm will be glad to know that they exist.


In gearing up for the release, I wanted to do something to mark the occasion for me and the HP-lovin' friends I would be attending it with. Two people in particular have been my staunch Potter compadres for the past five years. Aside from getting cast-of-Lord-of-the-Rings-style matching tattoos, I thought the best option would be something (surprise, surprise) knitted. Something small and cute, and that would stand on its own as an object, not just a prop for the midnight madness party.

Then it hit me, snitches! Snitches are small, their very name implies cuteness, and they're totally original to HP. I decided to make a passel of snitches, and then embroider the date of the release (7/21/07) and the initials of the recipient on each one. There were a few false starts with this, but the construction of the snitch body is pretty much identical to that of the knitted eyeball from a few entries back, so that part wasn't too tough. The wings posed another sort of problem--the wings are crocheted. Now I've got nothing against crochet at all. At ALL. You can do some pretty neat things with it, and it's so structural it's perfect for stuff like this. On the other hand, I have a very limited knowledge of crochet, and that made it hard to make two wings that were identical, at first. I sort of bumbled my way through one wing, and then when it was finished, I had no idea how to replicate it.



I've never read a crochet pattern, and I'm not too sure of the terminology, so writing down the method was difficult. In the end, I just bootstrapped my way through enough of them that I memorized what I was doing. Attaching the wings to the snitches was also oddly difficult to replicate, as I kept thinking of new ways to do it. At the end of the day, all the snitches are different, but I'm gonna call that a "feature of these uniquely handmade pieces" and be done with it. Embroidering on them was a pain in the ass, because embroidering on knitted fabric is never a walk in the park, and embroidering on a round knitted object stuffed with polyfill is...less good. Finally though, I struggled them all, and my pals looked happy to get them.

We had a really fun time at the release party, and I took all sorts of pictures, including one of me and Elisha knitting socks in front of a weird photo of Rupert Grint-as-Ron's disembodied head. I also took pictures of Jeremy and the rest of the ex-7 Corners bookstore bunch with Worm, who is possibly the best Harry Potter impersonator ever. Unfortunately, all these pictures were lost somewhere between my camera and my computer, so no one will ever see them. Le sigh. Luckily I had downloaded the photoshoot of Zelda the Knarl cum knitting model with the snitches earlier that day, which is great. Her agent would have killed me if they had been lost.

On a non-knitting related note, I got a Wii last weekend too! My friend Rob heard from the Internet that ToysRUs was getting shipments in Sunday, so we met up at around 8:30 before the store opened, had bagels and then went to stand in line. They were letting people in to get the consoles before the store actually opened, and I got one! It is pretty dang sweet, I have to say, and now I can play the latest Zelda game, something that truly makes me happy. Much as I like to pretend Zelda is named for Fitzgerald's mad wife, I must admit that she is probably named for my favorite vid game franchise eVAR. Also, Princess Zelda in this game? Kind of a babe. Just sayin'