Of all the gifts I've ever given my sister, the one that elicited the biggest reaction was the Sherlock fan girl kit I gave her for Christmas 2016. Alanna was simply delighted with it. She was also quite happy with the Sherlock notebook I made for her in 2025. She loves Game of Thrones as well, and has been very pleased to get (over the course of various gift-giving occasions) a thrift shop copy of the Game of Thrones cookbook, a thrift shop set of four glass tumblers bearing the crest of one of the families on the show, a dollar store 3D Game of Thrones puzzle, and a thrift shop shrink-wrapped Game of Thrones gift box that proved to contain a pint glass, a bottle opener, a figurine, and another item or two I can't recall now. I keep teasing her that, since she also has a Celtic-stencilled table set that I made for her, she has everything she needs to throw a Game of Thrones-themed dinner and viewing party for her friends who also like the show.
In 2023, I decided to see if I couldn't replicate the success of that Sherlock gift by putting together a fan girl kit for a third show she loves: Supernatural. I like the show quite a lot myself. I have seen the entire 15-year run twice, and even spearheaded a rewatch and discussion of all 327 episodes on Metafilter.com's FanFare subsite in 2021/22. I could use my own fair knowledge of Supernatural to assemble some really fun and useful items. It was a relief to know that I would understand all the references and wouldn't be at risk of taking any quotes out of context.
I began researching my options. First I looked to see what Amazon had to offer, but I wasn't thrilled with the show merchandise they had, which I thought mostly uninspired and overpriced (i.e., t-shirts and mugs printed with quotes from the show in plain text). The one thing I found that I wanted to buy was the official Supernatural cookbook. Alanna loves pie just about as much as Dean Winchester.
I wanted two or three other items to go with the cookbook, so I began researching crafting ideas. I wanted things that not only referenced the show in an interesting and artistic way, but also were of some practical use. I searched Ravelry for Supernatural-themed knitting patterns, but they didn't have that many of those and I didn't think Alanna would particularly like or ever use any of them. I googled, and also searched Pinterest. That was more fruitful. I have no interest in making or acquiring fan art for myself -- I don't even like having books with movie cover images or photo inserts -- but I do find it a lot of fun to see the level of ingenuity, insight, and wit fans bring to their interpretive crafts, and I enjoy making fan art as a gift for someone who will enjoy it. Ultimately, I identified three crafts I wanted to make: a mug with a quote from the show, bottle cap fridge magnets, and a box painted with signs and sigils. I added the items I had found and intended to use as models to a secret Pinterest board entitled "For Alanna", which is where I keep track of all my gift ideas and plans for her.
The next step was to gather supplies. I needed bottle caps for the fridge magnets. I wondered for a moment how I was going to get the bottle caps, as I hate beer and don't much like pop, but it soon occurred to me that I do enjoy the occasional bottle of non-alcoholic ginger beer, so I saved my bottle caps from those until I had half a dozen. I also had some small round magnets on hand that I had saved from discarded plastic shower curtain liners. I always knew those would come in handy some day!
Originally I thought I'd have to buy a wooden box and a plain mug and began keeping an eye out for suitable ones during my weekly neighbourhood thrift shop tour, but I soon realized that I already had a box and mug on hand that would be perfect for what I had in mind. The box was one I had bought from Value Village for $3.99 plus HST circa 2019 with the intention of repainting it and giving it to my honorary niece Olivia with the knitted doll I was making for her, to serve as a place to keep her doll's things. (I honestly don't know how I could ever have thought that 8" x 4.5" x 4.5" box would hold the doll's wardrobe, which in the end barely fit into the tote bag I made for it.) I had put the box away in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in my attic workroom with the idea that a sturdy little wooden box like that would surely come in handy at some point, and got it out again in early 2023 with a gratified feeling of having been right about that. Then in the spring of 2023, when I was reorganizing the back kitchen area cupboards that hold my tools and home renovation supplies, I came across the little faux lock detail that you see in front of the box in the above photo. It was originally on the upholstered blanket box I had found on a neighbour's curb, and when I had done the blanket box over for the attic in 2012, I left it off as I thought it didn't really work on it, and tucked it away in my box of renovation odds and ends for some future use. I could definitely see it working on the painted box for this fan girl kit, so I added it to the things I was collecting for this project.
As for the black mug you see in the photo above, it came with a President's Choice freebie trial membership thing. It's a lovely mug, but it didn't go with my aesthetic or my kitchen decor, so I set it aside to give to my friend Lindsie, as I thought it was very much her taste. When I came across it in the spare bedroom closet where I keep my gifts mid-2023, it occurred to me that it was exactly Alanna's taste too (Alanna and Lindsie have very similar aesthetics -- there have been a few times when they have given me identical or perfectly coordinated gifts though they've never so much as met each other), and just the thing for this fan girl project, so I added the mug to my collection of materials set aside for this present of Alanna's.
Though I bought the cookbook and had made plans and collected some supplies to do the mug, box, and bottle cap magnets, I didn't get around to doing the three crafts in 2023. In 2024, when I again intended to get the fan girl project done for Christmas of that year, I discovered that there was after all a Supernatural knitting pattern in the Ravelry database that I wanted to make: the Winchester Plaid Anti-Possession Mittens, designed by Kathy Lewinski. I thought it was just as well that the gift was delayed as it would be better to include the mittens with the other four items. I had some gray and black fingering yarn that would be perfect for them, and they would go quite well with the black capelet I had made for Alanna for Christmas 2024.
I began working on the mittens in October 2024 with the idea of having them done by Christmas. Then it turned out I had the hardest time getting gauge that I've ever had. Usually I don't have issues with that at all, my gauge being exactly what the pattern and/or the yarn skein band says it should be. Alanna has large hands for a woman, so initially I thought I'd knit them on larger needles than the pattern called for, aiming to make them a men's small instead of a women's medium. I began work, and three inches in found the pattern was way too large. I switched down a needle size, and knitted another three inches. Still too big. I began again with the recommended size of 2.5 mm. Again too big, and again I ripped out what I'd done and began again with 2 mm DPNS, the smallest size I own. Guess what? Still quite a bit bigger than the pattern gauge. And this isn't a pattern I could adjust for width, as the anti-possession symbol takes up the entire width of the mitten.
In retrospect I should have bought a set of 1.75 mm or even 1.5 mm DPNS, but instead I just adjusted the design as much as I could, shortening them considerably by doing only two repeats of the fair isle pattern before the thumb instead of four as the pattern calls for, and narrowing them by a stitch or two on each side. They weren't much too wide for me when I tried them on, and Alanna does have larger hands than me, so I thought they wouldn't be such a bad fit. Another complication was that I ran short of black yarn and could not get more of the same brand, though that wasn't a big deal as I was able to get a nearly identical black fingering, and in a project like this the switch would not be discernible at all.
But, between all my futzing around with different needle sizes and the fact that a chart-intensive, fine-gauge project like this is slow-going work at the best of times, Christmas 2024 found the mittens unfinished (though to be honest, so were the box, mug, and bottle cap magnets). I did have the capelet done and a number of awesome stocking stuffers ready to give Alanna, so she was not deprived, and I again kicked the can down the road to Christmas 2025.
I finally finished these mittens in June 2025. They're not so bad. I do wish I'd thought of sizing down the thumbs by narrowing the hole for them, but by the time I realized they were too big both the mittens were all done but the thumbs, and after all the ripping out I'd already done, I was not ripping two-thirds of the mittens out. Perhaps if Alanna wears these out I'll make her a better-fitting replacement pair.
The bottle cap magnets were the next item to be finished. Theoretically I had everything on hand that I needed to make them, and they were easy to make, requiring only a little cutting, gluing, and Mod Podging. I was even able to skip a step because the bottle caps were already black, eliminating the need to paint them. However, I did hit something of a snag when contending with my printer. It's a 2006 model with obsolete software that I can't install on my current (2021) laptop. I have to fire up my old, glacially slow 2017 laptop whenever I want to print anything. And while my printer can print text reliably well, it does not do at all well with images, colours, or even grayscale. I had to print off some different sheets of images for the bottle caps and cherry pick the few that printed adequately. Which meant I didn't get to use some of the ones I liked the most. There was one that featured the Impala and the words "Carry on My Wayward Son" that I very much wanted to use, but it just didn't print out well enough, sigh. But these six are okay options. And while Sam and Dean's mug shots didn't print out great, they have a certain newsprint/faded wanted poster quality that works. So I'm telling myself anyway.
I finished the painted box shortly after the magnets. Initially I thought I would be able to make it entirely out of supplies I already had. I painted it three times with dollar store black craft paint I had on hand, marked the sigils and the initials on it with pencil, and then I was going to paint them on in cream with some craft paint I also had among my art supplies, but after a few attempts at trying to do that and messing it up (and having to sand it down, paint it over, and start again), I headed off to the art store to buy a paint marker. It was a lot easier to render these markings with the marker than with a paint brush and I was done in about five or six minutes. Once the markings were made, I erased whatever pencil marks still showed, put on three coats of acrylic finish, and nailed the faux lock detail in place. I was pretty pleased with the result.
I don't know what purpose Alanna might find for this box, but it should be handy for something. I opted not to put any markings on the inside bottom, as they would not be likely to stand up well to much wear and tear, but it has markings on the top, inside top, both ends, front and back, and the bottom. Except I forgot to take a photo of the bottom.:(
When I was rummaging through my tote bag of gift wrap supplies at some point in late summer 2025, looking for suitable items to wrap another gift, I found a little black velvet drawstring bag that I decided would be perfect for the bottle cap magnets. It proved to be just the right size to hold the six of them. I packed the mittens and the bottle caps in the box in the way the lead photo of this post shows when I wrapped the gift for Christmas, as it looked so much like a miniature version of a storage box the Winchester boys might have packed and stowed away somewhere in the Men of Letters bunker.
The last item to be completed was the mug. My plan for it took a number of twists and turns. Initially I thought I could just write the quote on the mug with marker as in the examples I'd seen online. I wanted to use a cream-coloured marker, which would stand out well on the black and match the rim on the mug. I researched the matter, and found there was no commercially available marker I could use that would survive much washing, but that I could use porcelain paint and bake it in the oven. I bought a little bottle of such paint, pencilled the design I wanted on the mug, and had a go at it. But as was the case with the box, I just couldn't seem to paint the design on the mug to the standard I wanted.
My next idea was to have the mug custom printed. I found a graphic online that I could use for that and loaded it on to a thumb drive in order to take it to a print shop with the mug. But when I had a telephone conversation with a guy from a custom mug printing place on December 2nd, I learned that one can't use just any ordinary mug for custom printing, that they have to have to be sublimated, and that they should also be smooth-surfaced and cylindrical in shape, not tapered. I was told it was possible to buy some supplies and sublimate the mug I had, but that the printing process was still not likely to turn out well given that the mug was tapered.
I reluctantly relinquished my plan of using the black, red-lined mug I had for this project and moved on to the idea of buying a sublimated mug from a printing place. I was hoping to get a black one, as black is Alanna's favourite colour. None of the places I checked had a black mug, but Staples.ca did have a white one with a black handle and lining, and it was on sale. They also had a heat-sensitive mug that looks plain black until there is hot liquid in it, and then it goes white and shows the design, which was kind of cool, but heat-sensitive mugs can't be used in the microwave, and I thought Alanna might consider it not worthwhile to have to use the kettle to heat water for her tea in order to use that mug. The ordinary black-lined mug it was.
I spent hours working on my mug printing order on the Staples.ca site. There was a whole learning process involved as I first had to figure out how to use their mug design program and, when the graphic I was using proved not to be the right dimensions for the mug, how to adjust the image in Paint 3D. Finally I got the design looking just right (the mug design program has a preview feature which shows you photos of the mug with your image on it so you can see just how it will look), and I was all ready to finalize my order when I realized for the first time that the graphic I was using had watermarks in it. They only showed when my laptop screen was titled to a certain angle.
Okay, so another change of plan (by now I was on what? Plan E for the mug? If not even further along in the alphabet?). I would have to create my own graphic. Uh oh. I have studied some graphic design, but that was back in publishing school in 1993/1994, and then in a Visual Arts certificate program I did in the late nineties and early 2000s at George Brown College, was mostly oriented to page designs/layouts and typography, not art work. It also involved using design programs that, even if I could remember how to use them (and I cannot!) are obsolete and at least seven or eight computer generations removed from the graphic design programs commonly used today. In other words, my graphic design skills are both rustier and more awkward than Castiel's social skills could ever be.
But despite my nearly complete lack of graphic design skill and knowledge, I was game to try. After all, I just needed clip art of wings and one line of text. I searched the net for watermark-free clip art, and found a good site that offered an extensive selection of it. I found the season four scene where Dean meets Castiel on YouTube to remind myself of what Castiel's wings look like, paused it at the moment when Castiel shows Dean his wings, then searched the clip art site for a pair of angel wings that were black and similarly shaped. Once I found suitable wings, I opened a new file in Paint 3D and plugged away at creating a design. If I didn't know how to make Paint do something I wanted it to, I googled it and found instructions. I figured out how to split the angel wings and make them movable and resizable. I found the season six clip the quote is from on YouTube and double checked it for accuracy as the versions of it I have seen online are not all the same (my editorial skills are not rusty). I tried out various fonts, looking for one that would appear well on the mug, pair well with the wings, and reflect Castiel's ancient, powerful, and hilariously humourless and ultra-literal character. Finally after much fiddling around (and swearing at the computer when I couldn't get it to do something), I had an image I thought would do.
I did debate adding a halo to the image, as a number of the graphics made of this quote online have halos in them and it would make the design visually better, but Castiel doesn't have a halo in the show, and my desire to make the mug's design consistent with the text won out over my concern for its aesthetic. (Again, I am an editor, not a graphic designer.) I did have an idea that it would be pretty neat to incorporate the quote into a line drawing of a trench coat or silhouette of a trench coated-man with the clip art wings extending from the shoulders, but again I reminded myself of my virtually non-existent graphic design skills. If I aimed that high, it would probably only end in my spending a number of very frustrating hours in the attempt without creating anything I'd consider usable. I decided to count myself lucky to have been able to put together a decent-looking basic graphic.
I uploaded my design to the Staples mug design program, adjusted it a little for size, thought the preview photos looked pretty good, and proceeded to check out, finally, finally, finally ordering the %$#@! thing for $10.16.
Staples had the mug ready for pick up in about ten days. The result was... okay. It looks a little amateurish, and the words and images are not quite aligned. But it would do. Besides being funny, the quote suits her personally, as she can be moody, irritable, blunt, uncommunicative, and inclined to be something of a hermit, and she jokes about it. When I was selecting a Sherlock notebook folder for her, I went with the one that featured the quote, "Get out. I need to go to my mind palace.", because it seemed... very her. She agreed that it was. When she got this mug on Christmas morning, I told her I was torn between doing this quote or doing an "Agent Beyoncé" mug, and Alanna told me she preferred the Castiel quote one, as while she thinks the Agent Beyoncé thing is very funny on Supernatural, she is not a Beyoncé fan.
While I waited for the mug to be ready for pick up, I bought a hammered metal-effect gift bag and a pack of black tissue paper to wrap the gift in. I think it
suits the Supernatural theme and vibe quite well.
So, there you have it: a Supernatural cookbook, box, magnets, mug, and mittens, along with the gift bag I bought specifically for it. I'd initially hoped this would be a super inexpensive gift aside from the cookbook, with me whipping together the other items from stuff I had sitting around, but given the skein of yarn, paint marker, bottle of porcelain paint, and custom-printed mug I had to buy, it wasn't an inexpensive gift, at least not according to my budget. I also did not expect it to take me nearly three years to get this kit ready to give to my sister. But Alanna seemed reasonably pleased with the gift when she opened it on Christmas morning, so it was worth it. And there'll be peace now that I am done.:)
