My boyfriend inspires the best of the geek craft I have to offer. Check out the Valentine’s Day card I made him this year.

Nothing like hexidecimal codes and an allusion to a cult classic internet video.

Who remembers when the “All Your Base is Belong to Us” video first came out on the interwebz? I think I was in middle or high school… I feel so old now considering that must have been like 10 years ago.

I dabble in a lot of different crafts although knitting and spinning yarn are my main passions. When the Shrinky Dink craze came back last year I got really excited. I did Shrinky Dinks back in the early 90s when I was a kid and was eager to try my hand at them again. Addictive! Aaaand, so easy to nerd out with! (Please forgive the terrible pictures- they were taken last year with a horrible camera. Now I have a fantastic camera so all future pictures should be somewhat decent!)

In honor of my favorite show Futurama, it’s Leela and Nibbler.

In honor of my favorite food- sushi hairclips.

In honor of my tattoo and knitting!

Tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. (Yes, it hurt… bad.)

Excuse the poor lighting and set up of the pics- I took them at work this morning. They show the color difference well and I can’t decide how bad this is. I spent a good chunk of change at the yarn store yesterday to buy several skeins of the new blue so I’m wondering if I could sell it somewhere and order the first color online. Anyone need some light denim colored Cascade 220?

Jason says he doesn’t mind the difference and just wants it no matter what it looks like. But come on, I don’t know any crafters who aren’t perfectionists about their work. I have to trust his judgement and just go with it. Maybe once I get further into it I won’t be staring at the line right there.

With the huge response I got on the LiveJournal group craftgrrl, I think I have a responsibility to make this the most awesome scarf that ever was. Cooler than the binary message scarf I started last year. But it makes me freak out a little, too, and I started stressing over a few things this morning before I head off to work.

Why didn’t I knit the scarf in a fingering or sock weight? Then it’s be nice and small and not the massive behemoth I have to haul around. It would be easier to manage the intarsia without heavy balls of yarn dangling off the back and the screw ups would be less noticeable.

The new color I got for the blue sky is really off. Yipes. Do I frog it and order the right color online or do I keep going with the new color? Picture posted soon so you can all see what I’m talking about.

But in lighter thoughts, I think I’m going to post some of my other geek projects later this morning or afternoon. Geek craft permeates a lot of what I make. I hardly make things for myself and most of the time I want to make something awesome for my boyfriend. And since his level of geekery surpasses that of most, I’m always trying to one up (no pun intended) myself and come up with better projects.

Sadly though since I started my summer job, I’ve been too busy/tired to knit much. I’ve been spinning yarn like a champ, but diving into a knitting project is so unappealing most of the time. I nanny ten hours a day and get about a one and a half to two hour break when both of the kids are sleeping in the afternoon. That’s my time to eat lunch and chill and most of the time I end up taking a nap, too. So having the concentration and energy needed to knit anything intricate is a challenge. But I think with the motivation Jason gave me this week, I don’t think I’ll put off working on this scarf.

My favorite Atlanta knitting shop Knitch is having a huge sale this weekend. I ran out of the blue I’m using in the sky (Cascade 220 brand) so I clipped off a little bit of the end and took it with me to the sale. I also can’t find my white skein so I was hoping to get that, too (I can’t believe how much stuff I misplaced in our move to the new house!).

I went straight to the store’s Cascade section and behold, none of the blue I needed or any white. Jason helped me find a similar color blue and the woman at the shop said either Knitch or Cascade was discontinuing the shade I’ve been using. Considering where I’m at in the scarf and how much farther I have to go, a slight shade change probably won’t make a huge difference. But I’m still skeptical. I haven’t started with the new color yet, but I took some pictures by the window to gauge the color difference.

It’s definitely different. But not outrageously different. Different enough to notice, but still works for the color of the sky. I don’t know… I’m picky about colors and details, but Jason said he thought it will work. Hope so… I bought five skeins of it!

Here are pics from last night with Jason helping out as a model.

Oh Lordy, this thing is already really long… and I’m not even a third of the way in yet!

I’ve gotten to the first major jump in the level. See the hole on the right?

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!