Not Your Grandmother`s Knitting: Star Trek Drink Cozy

I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately, both the original series and The Next Generation.

I wanted to make a drink cozy designed after the notorious red-shirted crewmen on the original series. They are well known for being killed and replaced in the show, much like the beer in my fridge.

There is a wonderful pattern on Ravelry designed after the command shirts for TNG. Unfortunately, this pattern was not quite what I had in mind so I grabbed my needles and set to work on my own design.

The pattern I made is based on the uniforms from the original series. Typically the red shirted crew members are part of the security team and are well known for being the expendable crew members. It is a safe bet that the red shirt will be the one who does not return from away missions.

The first draft turned out very well. The sizing was just about where I wanted it, fitting a standard bottle. The chart for the star fleet insignia also turned out very well. In the first draft this was knit in with intarsia style.

My second draft had a few changes. One, I used smaller needles for a tighter knit. This resulted in the whole item being smaller (of course) and made me adjust my gauge to fit the final sizing. I also changed the red yarn used to better match the classic uniforms. The main change was that I decided to put the insignia on using a duplicate stitch, rather then knitting it in with the base colour. This resulted in the insignia looking much cleaner and there are no changes in gauge or holes with the colour changes.

The third and final draft fixed the gauge problem with using smaller needles. It also helped me design the amount of rows to have for the black edging to the shirt. I think this one nailed it!