We have an awesome weekly meeting at work where we discuss technical issues that arise, make decisions on implementation, and make lots of inside jokes and generally have a good time because we work with awesome people. It’s my favorite meeting of the week – yes, there can be such a thing!
The previous long-time chair of this meeting used a wooden gavel when decisions were made, and since he had to pass on the honors to someone else recently, we needed a new gavel. I wanted to knit the new gavel so that it wouldn’t be so noisy. We also had a thing about each person on the team being assigned a superhero identity, so since the new chair was Thor, the choice for a new gavel was obvious.
I looked around online for ideas and found one that I thought looked the most like Thor’s hammer from the movie (I wanted it to be recognizable, even though the real Mjolnir looks quite different) and reverse engineered it from the pictures, simplifying and changing a few things based on preference. And although I didn’t use the actual pattern, I have to give credit where credit is due since the design was really nice.
I also added a chopstick inside the handle so that it would hold its shape when held and a piece of cardboard at the base so that the chopstick wouldn’t poke through. We had the idea that this gavel would be thrown at people instead of making noise when they are not paying attention since it would be soft, so I made sure there was enough padding on the hammer side so that the other end of chopstick wouldn’t come out and stab someone. It ended up holding up pretty well and seemed to be a big hit (no pun intended as we haven’t thrown it at anyone yet).
Since I didn’t have yarn in these colors when I set out to make Thor’s Hammer, I bought yarn specifically for it and ended up having a ton left over. Want to see what I did with the rest? Hint: it’s one of my favorite things lately.
You can also view this project on Ravelry.
