Friday Funny

Bet you didn't know I'm a science officer serving in navigation aboard the USS Kitchener NCC-606 or that the real reason I'm so scarce here these days is because I'm cruising at warp speed en route to a mercy mission on Maranga IV in the Klingon Empire. The colony there is being evacuated due to volatile changes in the planet's atmosphere, and my shipmates and I are crafting items to offer comfort to the colonists.

Actually, the Starfleet Fiber Arts Corps has nothing to do with my real-life commitments, but pretending and make believe take away some of the sting of everyday stress.

Ravelry is full of all kinds of optional fun challenges. There are the annual Ravelympics, coinciding with the Olympics, and there are off-season challenges catering to every fad, such as Harry Potter, Hobbits, Tardis and Fantasia. Theme challenges are a fun way to keep the mind purring by figuring out a creative way to fit whatever you're making within inventive guidelines.

One of this month's Starfleet challenges is to make something for charity or to give away, but participants are using the Maranga IV Mission fairy tale above to cloak their projects with imagination and make them more fun. A neighbor of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and she opted to shave her head instead of letting the chemo slowly tear her hair away. Temperatures in Colorado can still get rather cool this time of year, and sometimes rapidly and unexpectedly. She had red hair. So I designed a curly-haired and jeweled red hat for her.

One of last month's missions was to create something to demonstrate diplomatic goodwill between Earth and the planet Vulcan. My Ice Mountain Snowflake Rug transformed via written word into a star chart of a previously unexplored region of the universe called the San Juan Solar System (San Juans being the name of the Colorado mountains where I wish I could spend a great deal more of my time).

I enlisted in Starfleet Fiber Arts Corps because I love Star Trek (and Star Wars, Avatar, Flight of the Navigator, Space Camp... have I ever mentioned I grew up in the shadow of the International Space Hall of Fame and near an active air force base?!?) and because I'm always making something. I thought the challenges would be great journalistic aerobics, especially given the nature of things I must write each day off-blog far from fantasy or imaginative and much more along the lines of... well, boring.

I didn't know there would be monthly contests. I didn't know my Ice Mountain Snowflake Rug was named one of the top projects for last month. And I didn't know until I got earburned that I'd won a prize! I won a custom cartoon!

Kristy Davenport drew the cartoon below, incorporating many of my favorite things. I've never even met her, but she is so on target! Winning a prize is so cool, and doing it so out of the blue is beyond words, but when said prize is so personalized, well, it just makes my toes tingle!

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