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In the fall of 2009, around the time I met the Astronomer, I was perusing The Container Store and saw those plastic display cubes that house baseballs and softballs. I didn't think much of it at the time, but a couple of months later, after I gave the Astronomer the Yankees hat, I got an idea for a knitted baseball. I'd recently completed the Dalek, so I knew stuffing a knitted item wasn't that hard. Knitting a ball isn't particularly difficult either, but I wanted it to be authentic. I didn't want a knitted sphere with the red stitches sewn onto it; I wanted the trademark curved seam underneath the stitches as well. Besides, that would make it easier to place the stiches correctly. After failing to locate a pattern for a knitted baseball on the Internet, I purchased a baseball from WalMart at six o'clock in the morning and used (and broke) a seam ripper to remove the synthetic leather covering to figure out how the pieces went together. (Yes, I destroyed a perfectly good baseball to make this cheap imitation. Shut up.) Baseballs (and softballs) are constructed of two 8-shaped pieces of leather covering a hard, dense interior. The wide parts of one figure eight join the narrow bits of the other. It took me a minute to figure out exactly how; it was a rather complicated Moebius moment. Anyway, after ripping the baseball apart, I placed one of the leather figure eights on my desk and then took my knitting needles and cast on a few stitches. I increased and decreased where the leather eight did, matching the knitted fabric to the leather fabric every row to make sure it matched just right, typing the pattern in EditPlus as I went. (As with recipes, you always want to write down patterns the first time to eliminate guesswork later.) Upon completing one figure eight, I made another identical one. Then I stitched them together, stuffing as I went, and sewed on the red stitches. Then I put it in its display cube. |