Nerd Wars Tournament 8 Round 1 - Discovery

Team Rangers
Craft: knit

Project:
Description: Primordial soup is the place where the life began. Theory explains that the warm temperatures of the earth and its water bodies, a mix of gases including Methane (CH4), hydrogen (H2), ammonia (NH3), and water vapor (H2O) together with some form of energy ( assuming lightning) were responsible for the formation of the first building blocks of life, the amino acid. How it actually happened it’s still a mystery.

I’ve knitted colorful block that reminds me of amino acids in RNA in primordial soup - bright, full of colors and life.
Watson-Creek model of RNA:

My block:

Team tie-in:
Colors, colors everywhere! Babylon 5 is a place of many alien races and in hopes to promote better understandig between them, captain Sinclair gave every race an opportunity to display their customs. Minbari were dignified, Narn’s full of chants and smoke, and Centauri? Loud, full of food, colors and drinks! This square will be perfect coaster on Ambasador Molari festive table!

Nerd Wars Tournament 8 Round 1 - Encyclopedia

Team Rangers
Craft: knit

Project: Opal square

Description: I was born in August, but I was 2 months premature, my birthday was supposed to be in October. Birthstone of October is Opal - mineraloid that can have different colors, but most commons are blue and green. I knitted a 1st square for my sons’ blanket in light blue, representing opal like this:

I do claim my birthday on both days :) I do feel like Libra more often than Leo - several people refused to believe that I am Leo :)
Team tie-in: Blue is prominent color on Babylon 5 - station is blue, Eartforce uniforms are blue and when off duty, several people wear blue or silver color. And yet, since most humans are military, we don’t see them wearing jewelry much, but other races do, specially Centauri - they value appearances way more than anybody else and wear their wealth proudly,as we can see at this Amabasador Londo picture:

Centauri gliter:

Nerd Wars Tournament 8 Round 1 - Nerdology

Team Rangers
Craft: knit
Project page:
Bearfoot bear
Team Unity Project
Description of the project;
My inspiration for this project are feet - humble, everyday feet that propel us from one place to another, without complaining and burning fossil fuel… Well, not exactly not complaining, ok:

Feet are simplest form of alternative transportation, and yet often overlooked or neglected.

To get our feet to perform their best, we need good, comfortable socks to cushion them when walking, protect them from cold and pamper them with softness.
I knitted pair of socks for my DH, of wool/mohair blend that are silky to touch and tough to wear. They were supposed to be his birthday present (july) but he liked them so much that he got them earlier :)

Team tie-in:
Captain Sheridan is a all around awesome guy, but as everybody else, he has his little “rituals” to help him deal with stressful situations. One of them is leaving socks to wash - his old drill sergeant always said that the person who has nothing left to do is going to get killed. Only he would live forever, because he always had socks to wash…
This is also our TUP project - this month we are crafting something to represent 20 years of Babylon 5 and it’s importance to us. Those socks are made of yarn famous for durability and comfort, and I do hope they will last at least big chunk of those 20 years. Being present for my DH, who is in my life for almost as 20 years too and another big Babylon 5 fan, makes me very glad that I am able to knit Sheridan socks for him and make him happy!

Nerd Wars Tournament 8 Round 1 - Flexible schedule

Here are the projects:

1) Flexible schedule is the category for things you started before Nerd Wars tournament, and you finish it during the tournament, and it required at least 2 hours of work.
Challenge:
This month’s challenge is to sit back, relax, and enjoy a cup of your favorite beverage while you finish off those projects we just haven’t had the chance to complete - and pay homage to that beverage.

 I did 2 - circular baby blanket for a coworker

 That circular blanket was fun, at least until I got to the last couple of rows - every row started to take forever! And then, I did border in seed stitch, and didn't do increases, and had to go back 8 rows because blanket was not laying flat, but circle was getting too small, bunching into rectangular shape. I knitted border again with increases (but only 3 rows) in seed stitch and it worked fine. Cascade 220 relaxes a lot after washing and soften a bit, so after blocking this blanket much better.

Baby cardigan for her baby boy - Valley yarn superwash from Webs:

I've named cardigan "Little soy milk bean" - pattern is "Coffee bean" and me and coworker often went to Starbucks together in the afternoon for coffee - latte with soy milk for me, short macciatto for her  :)
I love the colors, initially I wanted more blue, like the one in the blanket, but WEBS at Stitches was out of blue (guess what was the most popular color!) so I got bluish-purple and I just love it :) Luckily, my coworker likes the colors too :) And those cute little frog buttons are from Etsy shop :)
 Only issue I can see is that I made 3 months size, and I have a feeling that this will be used more at 6 or even 9 months, depending on the baby size...

Tournament 8

 Deja vu... I am Ranger again ....:) And I am rewatching Babylon 5 again :)

 This time I decided to try to post more often. Round 1 is done, and I had bunch of projects finished, I almost melt the dwarf :)

 Well, official terminology is dwarf the nebula, previously it was melt the cube - when you finish all the challenges for that month. We, the Rangers joke about having a date with dwarf, nebulize the dwarf, melt the dwarf ... Poor dwarf with us :)

I almost did got that dwarf, if 28th wasn't on Friday night I would mail donation one too, but couldn't get to the post office in time. Anyways, it was fun round.