2015/04/09

The Perfect Non-Lethal Sling Projectile

the clippers are useful because they can travel with you 
on an airplane, not so the lighter, and the hooks are
hit and miss, depends on the THA agent.

16 Row Projectile Pattern:
Row 1) Magic Circle (Ch 2. 6 Sc in second Ch from hook.) (6)
Row 2) inc in each stitch around. (12)
Row 3) 1, +, 2, +, 1, +, 2, +, 1, + (17)
Row 4) 1, +, 3, +, 2, +, 3, +, 2, +, 1 (22)
Row 5) 2, +, 5, +, 4, +, 5, +, 2 (26)
Row 6) 4, +, 7, +, 8, +, 4 (29)
Row 7) 7, +, 9, +, 9, +, 1 (32)
Row 8) 13, +, 18 (33)

The above pattern should be read as follows, starting in Row 3 read: "one single stitch, one increase stitch, 2 single stitches etc..." This pattern will make half the ball, so make two of them, and then see the links below for the closing.  I like to use the tail of the pattern to sew the halves together, this mean, just to be safe you should leave 12 inches at least.

Also here's one more trick, if you take the tail end of each side and pull it through the final loop of the other side.  You can tighten this slowly for a very clean starting point.  Plus this brings the bulge of the patterns together like hand in glove erasing them both basically.  Some knots are in order after this inside the sphere of course and then you can begin the stitching together.  I found that if you keep the tails on the side corresponding to their own color, it allows the eye to focus on the color change at the seam making the closing stitching virtually invisible.  I have to do two or three rounds of tightening before I'm ready to close it up.

This guy is the perfect size and weight for slinging.  This ballistic crochet ball was done with a # 2.5 hook, closed with the baseball stitch and I tried a different closing, tying it outside and then pulling the knot down into the ball from the other side using the hook.  It is likely to come out after the beating it will definitely receive being slung, but, it is also possible to res-tuff it with something different because I left enough tail to be able to retie it.

Oh and how to know it's non lethal?  I subjected myself to some "testing,"  Had some former baseball players throw these as hard as they could at me from just 3 meters away.  These do pack a bit of a punch, but they don't cross the pain threshold