Warp Factor Trek

As a fan of the show, Star Trek embodies my own beliefs of the IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), and I fell in love with the series in 1994, just after TNG ended. I bought all the movies at that time, and fell in love with DS9 and Voyager, which were currently running then, and I started taping every episode in 1997. I eventually got the rest on reruns.

I went to see Star Trek: First Contact on the Sunday after it was released (24 November 1996), and I thought the point of the movie was the Borg parts, but on recent reflection the point of it is the First Contact with Vulcans at the end. One minute out of a two-hour movie. But that changed Human future history, as Humans had an enormous impact on the rest of the galaxy, bringing species and cultures together that would never have been able to connect on their own terms. The Vulcans are so inspirational to me that I’ve made several cross-stitch patterns of Spock, Soval, and other Vulcans from Enterprise.

I have always enjoyed making handicrafts, such as plastic canvas and cross-stitching. Cross-stitching is such a versatile material, with thousands of colours, that I was excited to learn about several games for it on Facebook. I also found a program online where it will design a pattern based on your pictures. The game I like best only goes to a maximum of thirty-two colours, and has no fancy stitching. But it is great for designing patterns based on pictures I find on the Internet. You can pick the number of colours (up to thirty-two), the sharpness of the image, and dithering (makes it more like a photograph with checkerboarding, but ends up taking longer to do the pattern).

I find that Star Trek patterns work well in the game, even though it doesn’t do human faces that well, most of the time. As well as Vulcans, I have made a couple patterns of the Enterprise (NCC-1701, and NX-01). Not only is cross-stitching relaxing for me, extremely fun to do, but also combining it with my favourite movies and TV shows is doubly fun.

Since finding this game and website for doing cross-stitching, I found a book called Star Trek Cross Stitch: Explore Strange New Worlds of Crafting, by John Lohman, which features thirty-eight patterns for various purposes (picture, pillow, etc). I would imagine some patterns would look good on a bag. It is similar to Knitting the Galaxy, which is about knitting Star Wars patterns, which actually include clothing (socks, mitts, toque). I wonder if there is a knitting or crocheting book for Star Trek.

I hope others like the pictures that I have done, as many like to draw, but my drawing skills remain at a six-year-old’s level, and I tend to draw cartoony figures. I have found several Star Trek colouring books (published by Dark Horse), which is cool since before about five years ago colouring was considered a child’s activity, and there is of course fan-fiction which is as old as the original Star Trek. All forms of our art are beautiful.

The book Star Trek Cross Stitch: Explore Strange New Worlds of Crafting, by John Lohman, is available from Amazon.com.

(All images: Michelle Deanne Venn)