More Rice

Second part of the second part, now. With me so far?

On Ravelry, there are many groups who all share the commonality of fiber and crafting--specifically spinning, dyeing, knitting, crocheting, and weaving. Some are groups for fans of particular designers, some are groups based on location, and some are groups that focus on a particular type of craft. Lace knitting is fairly popular.

And then there are the crossover folks, the people who are fans of the Tour de France and knitting, the people who love beer and weaving, and yes, MMORPG¹ fans who crochet while waiting for the browser to refresh already. As you may imagine, there are more than a few people who are science fiction and fantasy fans prowling around the board in places like the Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild.

Most of my knitting mojo has been directed at Ravelry, and one group in particular: the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup. As you may gather from the name of the group, the focus is on fans of Ms. Rowling’s seminal work.

I’ve described it to my Muggle friends as a group for competitive knitting or knitting as an extreme sport, but of course, there’s more to it than that. Given its composition of fiction fanatics, it has taken on a flavor of its own; more like a LARP² played via text message, which actually results in projects being made in accordance with prompted guidelines.

Of course, me being me, I’ve worked out a whole character arc, including backstory nuggets that I stumble across every so often, and I know a large chunk of where this is going. So whenever I respond to a prompt with a picture of what I was inspired to create, I’ll add some flavor by building a story around it.

Which brings us down to the last few pairs of socks and underpants.

Most of my happyfunstuffs ends up on Ravelry. I’d invite you all to follow me over there, but I’m betting that those of you on the fiber spectrum are either (a) already there, or (b) not interested at all. Those of you who are not fiber geeks have no reason to be there.

So the mountain simply must come to Mohammed. Or, in other words, I’ll leverage my creative fun, and post photos and stories here, in the order they were created.

I’ll tag this series with HPKC, so those of you interested in following along can do so. After all, this was originally created as a place to share stories and projects, like a bento box of topics. We’re just adding some more rice. And a Hello Kitty with soybean eyes and a Spam hairbow.

There will still be big things, like death, disease, and loss, and they’ll make guest appearances here on the same arbitrary schedule you’ve come to know and love. Meanwhile, it makes me happy to know that my deathless prose Spike’s stories will all be sitting right here.


1. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
2. Live Action Roleplaying Game