Preface: This post ended up being an ongoing diary to myself about knitting Jayne hats for the CA Browncoats to sell at Comic Con 2008 in late July.
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(started this post on a Monday – sorry don’t remember which)
Jayne #15 on the needles now. Bought more Mustard (yellow) yarn today since I’ve only teeny bit left which will get used for pompoms.
I need to have a massive ear flap marathon because the hats are as follows:
- Completed: 2
- Body/Pompom’d/Ends Woven in: 9
- Body: 4 (needs pom pom attached and ends woven in)
- PomPoms: 5 made up and yarn laid out for 2 more.
Been figuring that the biggest hurdle is getting the bodies made because that takes the most time (2hrs apiece). And if I set up the rest as assembly line, then it should go even faster for the finishing. Probably should do a finishing run soon but I’m off track for having 40 hats done in May thanks to sidetracking for several days on the facecloth for Dani and attempting to do Knucks for FinnP. I got one finished to the bound off and woven in state. Now it needs a mate and the letters embroidered on both and the window for gifting has passed.
This weekend will see a lot of driving and “waiting” around and etc so hopefully N & N will both do a fair share of driving so I can get needle time. Trying to average two hat bodies a day over Monday-Thurs this week. Made quota last night. Tonight hope to get at least #15 finished and #16 & 17 as well. And pompom’s attached and ends woven in on all the ones that still need it.
Need to make sure I have enough supplies on hand to knit as many hats as I can while on the road this weekend 
The burnt orange Berella 4 afghan yarn goes a long way. I think I get 5 hats worth out of each one. The mustard Vanna White yarn from Lion Brand? Not so much… I think 3 per skein. Need to check the other Michaels in the area to see if they’ve got more of the Berella 4 in burnt orange… it’s being clearanced out and I got everything that the one near work had.
(Tuesday)
Ok 2 finished hats and 15 done except for ear flaps. Only did 1.5 tonight but that’s ok cause I did finishing work on those plus the others that needed it.
(Wednesday)
Only one hat… ends woven in but need to make a pompom for it. Slow night because I spent effort checking other Michaels for more of the burnt orange Bernat Berella 4. Worried that I don’t have enough for trip since I discovered I’m on my last skein. But found that Red Heart Ltd Soft Yarn has a Tangerine color that’s less “rustic” looking but still suitable. Also got Paprika color in Wool Ease which was on sale for $2. (earflap color) It’s kind of too close to the Burnt Orange but will work fine with the Tangerine. Now need to find a cheaper yellow option.
Tuesday (after the holiday weekend)
Well that was disappointing. I’d hoped to make use of the hours of car time and long weekend to really get stuff done. And I didn’t get get nearly as much done as I hoped. Trying to get caught up on ear flaps and finally have those big numbers of almost finished hats be FINISHED hats got bogged down in the fact that I found myself HATING the process of trying to knit on the earflaps. Just so awkward with the flipping around and etc to do.
I think I got 7 hats moved into the “FINISHED” category and knitted one more body as well. Part of it though is that I decided to use the biggest block of car time that I was awake for to get Jen’s facecloth knitted in time for her party the next day.
Definitely not going to make the goal of 40 for May. Will be lucky to even hit 24 which is the mark where I have to give them a tax form too for reporting. Guess I’ll aim for a hat a night including the ear flaps plus finishing ear flaps on at least one more.
On the upside, I’ve been practicing continental knitting while knitting the bodies. My hands get stressed quickly though so I only do it for 5-10 minutes at a time. And only with the knit stitch, haven’t even dreamed of trying to continental purl.
(Wednesday)
Last night I hit my goal of knitting a hat to completion plus finishing ear flaps on two more (goal is only one). I’m one of those that likes visual charts to check off. Need to make up a calendar chart that I can cross off.
Am out of the Bernat Berella 4 Burnt Orange now 
So now time to give the other orange yarn a try, it’s a brighter & lighter orange. Hope it won’t look like a traffic cone
Thanks to folks on Ravelry, I found a good source for BB4, cheap w/free shipping and placed an order but I haven’t heard anything from the shop. Need to follow up to see if it’s legit or not. Ok sent them email.
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Conclusion:
I eventually got the yarn from Yarn By Lisa but it was definitely a lesson in “not all dyelots are the same”. Even the texture/feeling of it can be very different. Fortunately a bath of a hat knitted in the yarn showed that it’d soften up. The color was harsher but still worked in the general color scheme.
In the back of my mind I’d wanted to at least get 40 hats. I reached that by early June so I kind of coasted through the month and then did a flurry of 10 hats in a couple days near the end of June. By the end of the first week of July, I had 52 hats!
They wanted the hats shipped early but I was suffering from some kind of severe inertia regarding mailing things at the post office. I finally got the package off on the 11th of July just before closing at 6pm. Sunday, I pulled out the delivery confirmation number and checked it out. It’d been delivered at 10:30am Saturday morning!! It is only a 3 hr drive but it’s still shocking to see a package delivered in 18.5 hours by the US Postal Service! Especially a BIG box.
I was just glad that the box was pretty light despite the size and it wasn’t even $8 for postage.
Emboldened by the ultra fast shipping and the reports of hats selling out in first few hours of the several days long Comic Con, I decided to do some more. I sent off 8 hats on Thursday, the first day of Comic Con, bringing my total to 60.
Today I had this conversation with the guy in charge of the hats:
Me: Hey so how did the Jayne hats do?
CABGuy: we sold out! quickly, too
all hats were gone by fridayMe: Did you get the last minute shipment of 8 that i sent?
hoped that someone would get it and be able to bring it to the boothCABGuy: yes we did, that helped us on saturday for a couple of minutes
Me: LMAO
That makes such a funny mental picture in my head. Before this conversation, I’d been reading around for news of how they did since betnoir reported that they’d gotten 134 hats in (52 of which were mine). She also found reports that there were a lot of Jayne hats bobbing around the con so I was hopeful.
In hindsight, it makes perfect sense… 100,000 people go to the con. Plenty go in costume but many don’t have any at all. A single Jayne hat invokes a whole costume. An easy way to fit in with a single buy. Plus Comic Con is full of people who adore Firefly.
So now game on for Wondercon in late Feb. Wish there was something else in between because even though I can always hand off completed hats ahead of time periodically, it’s a long time to wait to get paid. Must look to see if anyone else is willing to buy bulk Jayne hats from me for cons. Or even try selling them online myself? I know there’s another gal out there who has been doing it and has knitted over 600 hats. I could donate part of the proceeds to Dog Angels 
Oh man…I just realized!! I could knit my way to Finland!!
And perhaps now I’ll finish my own Jayne hat. It needs earflaps and has been sitting set aside for months now
