Comics took over my living room this week and I’m sure some of you can relate.

These long boxes hold a mere portion of the Boyfriend’s whole comic collection. C’mon, the boy’s been hoarding collecting comics for over twenty years and I shudder to think what our house will look like in another twenty years. I have a feeling we’ll die a death by yarn and comic ink fumes. Sounds like a happy way to go.

And tomorrow on my day off I get to finish the experiment I started earlier this week: yarn dyeing! I bought some “blank” yarn and Jacquard dyes from KnitPix and started experimenting on a few of my light wool yarns from the stash. So far, I put too much dye in the pot and the colors came out really dark. I want to run a few more test batches before I use the nice sock yarn I got. Any advice from experienced yarn dyers? I think I reeeeeally don’t need as much dye powder as I think I do, but that’s why I’m going to turn the kitchen into a laboratory tomorrow.

Remember those pictures I promised for Friday? Ha! It rained for three days straight which meant no walk and no natural light. And since the Boyfriend and I are the biggest procrastinators around, we tried to get all our chores and packing done at the last minute so no time to post apologies until today. Sorry.

Our road trip to Decatur, Alabama was fairly uneventful other than constant rain and the occasional horse, but I did manage to snap a few pictures of the little things that make even the most boring drive tolerable for about ten minutes.

I don’t need a sign to tell me that dump trucks are inedible.

Oh, snap! Handbags, shoes, AND a pharmacy? My life is complete.

I understand that there are sticks involved, but I’m intrigued by the “stuff.” Our friend’s iPhone later confirmed it was a furniture store- WORST FURNITURE STORE NAME EVER. And now that I’m looking at this picture again, Fred’s what? What belongs to Fred?

We had a fun weekend exploring the small town and hanging out with friends- something we never do anymore because apparently Jason and I have turned into an “old married couple.” We are neither old nor married so I hardly see how this is accurate. Shoot, I stayed up until 3 AM Atlanta-time on Friday night and I wasn’t even drinking…much. Our other couple friend who we drove to Alabama with dubbed us that in the car and I did my best all weekend to prove them wrong. I even squirted lotion all over my boob in an attempt to use shtick to win them over. Behold:

Beware Lotion Samplers of the World- if the lotion bottle nozzle is crusted over, don’t squeeze harder. Just walk away. It wasn’t meant to be.

The wedding was nice and it’s always a good thing to see your Significant Other looking sharp, even if they don’t shave or wear white socks. ::sigh:: I got a few great shots of Jason and one of our carpoolers Chris in action and acting like the goofball friends they are.

Ah yes, shoving their faces and posing like nuts when I ask them to smile. Quintessential Jason and Chris. But we still love them!

I did manage to get Jason to stand still long enough to take a nice picture with me, though. Finally, a picture of us together, both sober, and looking like respectable adults. A miracle.

I can forgive the beard because we both look cute and I believe I am standing on my tip-toes in this shot.

And to end the wedding re-cap on another happy note, Jason caught the garter and I caught the bouquet. But before you look at the picture, please let me explain that I did not steal the bouquet from a woman in a wheelchair, although it may appear to be so in this photo. The bouquet clearly came straight to me and I politely waited to see if any of the other ladies would take a grab at it, they did not, and I proceeded to make an amazing catch… just before flashing the entire room with my Spanx thigh-shaping shorts. If ever there was a gal who never picked up on lady-like behavior, ’twas me.

And now on to some yarn porn.

Rawr. I’m calling this one “Delightful” because my original title was “Berry Delightful,” a stupid pun, and I realized I use a lot of fruit-themed titles. It was also a delight to spin and ply and I think it’s the best yarn I’ve made yet. It’s due for a soak and stretch and then I make the difficult choice between using it myself or putting it up on Etsy. I’m leaning towards selfishness because it looks so good, but we shall see.

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!