Last night was the NHL Opening night and the Blackhawks Banner Raising ceremony.
Normally, I'll knit during hockey, to keep things interesting and to keep me from biting my nails down to their beds (sometimes this doesn't work so well...). As I was knitting last night, I realized that this shawl that I'm working on has absolutely nothing to do with hockey. At all. It's pretty, and I enjoy working on it, but perhaps I could come up with something else to do during hockey games...
And then it hit me.
A hockey shawl. Similar in style to this:
http://400squareftliving.blogspot.com/2013/01/knitting-my-year-in-temperatures-scarf.html but based somehow on the games that I watch instead of the weather. So I texted my good friend
Tasha to get her friend
Angelique's email, since she is working on a shawl similar to the one I linked to - I figured she'd have some great ideas.
AND SHE DID.
-- 1 -- Go through the league and pick a dominant color for each team. I know lots of teams have multiple colors but if it's possible to do one color per team, that would be ideal. If not, then figure out two colors for each team.
-- 2 -- Figure out a base/neutral color that is NOT among your team colors. Maybe this can be white, black or grey. Maybe it needs to be fuschia or purple
-- 3 -- For each game, knit one row in each team's color(s); home team gets "top" billing.
-- 4 -- Knit mainly in your base color for each game, but knit X number of stitches in a team's color(s) when they score. Again, if hockey scores are like soccer scores, this would be fairly boring. However, if hockey games are higher scoring, this could be fun, plus it's an interesting record of a game--i.e., when your team scores right off the bat or when mad points are scored in the final period
-- 5 -- At the end of the game, knit 2 rows in the winner's color(s).
It's brilliant.* I'll knit a row of each color at the beginning of the game, first a row for the home team, then one for the visitors, and then knit between five and ten stitches for every minute of the period in the neutral color (white), with goals portrayed as five stitches knit in the color of the team who scored. I'll end each period with five stitches of a second neutral color (gray). This will allow for extra time to be accounted for! If I have shutouts, they'll be marked by shots made vs missed (five stitches in the color if you make it, five in white if you miss it.) Winners will have two rows of their color to end the game.
So, now comes the hard part. COLORS. White will be the 'neutral' color - for ice. (My brother's idea.)
- Western Conference
- Central - 29 games this season
- Chicago Blackhawks - Red, Black, White
- Winnipeg Jets - Red, Blue, Gray
- Colorado Avalanche - Maroon, Blue, White
- Dallas Stars - Green, White, Yellow
- Minnesota Wild - Green, White, Red, Yellow
- Nashville Predators - Navy, Gold, White
- St. Louis Blues - Blue, Yellow, White
- Pacific - 21 games this season
- Edmonton Oilers - Navy, Orange, White
- Anaheim Ducks - Black, Beige, Orange
- Calgary Flames - Red, Yellow, White
- Los Angeles Kings - Black, Purple, White
- Phoenix Coyotes - Maroon, White
- San Jose Sharks - Black, Teal, White
- Vancouver Canucks - Blue, White, Green
(Gosh, this is going to be harder than I thought...)
- Eastern Conference
- Atlantic - 16 games this season
- Toronto Maple Leafs - Blue, White
- Montreal Canadiens - Red, White, Blue
- Boston Bruins - Black, Gold
- Buffalo Sabres - Black, Blue, White, Gold
- Detroit Red Wings - Red, White
- Florida Panthers - Red, Black, White
- Ottawa Senators - Red, White, Gold
- Tampa Bay Lightning - Blue, White
- Metropolitan - 16 games this season
- Washington Captials - Red, White Blue
- Carolina Hurricanes - Red, Black
- Columbus Blue Jackets - Blue, Red, White
- New Jersey Devils - Red, Black
- New York Islanders - Blue, Orange, White
- New York Rangers - White, Red, Blue
- Philadelphia Flyers - Orange, Black, White
- Pittsburgh Penguins - Black, Gold, White
Sadly, my brother pointed out to me that this means that I'll have to work with thirty different colors of yarn. So I might just do a "Hawks vs ..." color scheme. White still is neutral. Hawks are red. Opposing team is Black if in the Central division, Green if in the Metropolitan, Yellow if in the Atlantic, and Navy if in the Pacific. Second neutral color would be gray.
BRILLIANT. Now, to find excessive amounts of yarn in bulk and places to store it while I undertake this amazingly ridiculous project... (
Oh look... how convenient!)
SO. Thankfully, Simply Soft has no dye lot, which means I can always go back to my local Michael's and buy more when I need it. This is a pretty brilliant idea. I'll need lots of Red, White and Black to begin with...
* After consulting with my brother, I realized that if I ever missed games, just getting the recaps from blackhawks.nhl.com wouldn't be enough. Thus, I'd have to have a certain number of stitches per minute in order to effectively capture the game. Issues for overtime and shootouts were also addressed.
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