better than scrapbooking

When I finished graduate school, a friend made me a collage of photos, favorite memories, and inside jokes. This collage is so much better than a scrapbook, because it is a piece of art that hangs on my wall, rather than a book on the shelf that I never think to look at.

Combining art, photographs, movie ticket stubs, and peppered with tiny flip-flops and a wee knitting basket, the collage hangs in my kitchen above my favorite cabinet.  Some of the pictures are simply of friends, others have longer stories that shall not be told outside our little band of brothers.  My favorite part is the background- white paper with lyrics handwritten in fountain pen.

“Take my love, take my land. Take me where I cannot stand.

I don’t care if I’m still free, you can’t take the sky from me.

Take me  out to the black, they’ll know I ain’t coming back

Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me

Theres’ no place I can be, since I found Serentity

You can’t take the sky from me.”

Jayne’s hat from Firefly

My replica of Jayne's hat

Browncoats are fans of the 2002 TV show Firefly. Created by Joss Whedon, who also made Buffy and Angel, the show is cross between a western and a sci-fi space show. Delightfully clever and witty, the show was only broadcast for one season. Fortunately, the show was also made into a 2005 movie, Serenity.

In a later Firefly episode, The Messenger, the character Jayne receives a hand knitted hat from his mother leading another character to comment, “A man walks down the street in a hat like that- people will know he’s not afraid of anything”. While discussing movie with friends, I got the idea to make a replica of Jayne’s hat. I made the first hat for a friend’s birthday, but then had to make two more.

Screenshot from Firefly

How to make your own Jayne Hat:

1- The hardest part is finding the right color yarns. I watched the DVD many times, trying to memorize colors, then going to yarn shop and finding those colors were not in style. Do your best with what you find. To get the essence of the hat go with dusty colors rather than brighter, darker ones. My orange is way too bright. The yarn in the original seems to be also thicker than the worsted weight I used.

2- Measure your head and calculate your gauge. I recommend a smaller needle to create a tighter knit, but what you use will be entirely dependent on the yarn you buy.

3- I recommend using circular needles for this project, but you could also use 5 double-pointed needles. With your first color yarn, cast on the correct number of stitches, based on your calculations. Knit a band three inches long.

4- Join your next color yarn and knit another three inches in length.

5- Divide your stitches into four even sections and mark them with stitch markers. Alternatively, you can transfer the hat to double pointed needles (this is my preferred method).

Jayne's hat from above showing the decreases.

6- Decrease by knitting two stitches together at the beginning of each needle or after each stitch marker, until you have four stitches left. Clip the yarn leaving a few extra inches. Using a thick needle, thread the last four stitches and poke the needle through the top of the cap. Tie off the yarn on the inside of the cap.

7- Pick up an appropriate amount of stitches on either side of the bottom of the hat to start the ear-flaps. I did this by putting the hat on my head and using four small safety pins to mark where the earflaps should sit. Then, working left to right, pick up (hook) the stitches between the safety pins with a knitting needle.

8- Now only using two needles, knit your ear flaps as long as you want with the third color yarn. Bind off. Note: I left all of the ends of the yarn hanging and didn’t do use any finishing techniques. This actually makes the hat look more authentic.

Detail of the earflap bind-off

Detail of earflap on Jayne's hat

9- Finally, use the third color yarn to make the pom-pom on top . Wrap the yarn around your hand many, many, many times. Even when you think you have enough, you probably don’t. When you can’t wrap any more, pull the rolled yarn off your hand and grab the middle tightly (so it makes a figure 8). Tie the middle of the “8” as tightly as possible. Snip all of the loop ends. Sew your pom-pom to the top of the hat using the same yarn.

Jayne's hat