Exactly what it says on the tin. Today I’m posting pictures of my collection of patches, focusing on patches I haven’t sorted into an established category or developed into a category of their own. These are fun type things; allow me to show you:
My mother worked through a contractor for NASA back in the 1960s before she moved to Germany and married Pop. She worked on the Skylab program building scale models, and was very excited by the “space race” going on at the time. Living on and near Redstone Federal Arsenal growing up it was very close to home, you could say. I remember fondly visiting the Huntsville Space Center when I was a kid, usually during a visit to Grandma’s house over the summer. So, in honor of all that, and at Ma’s suggestion, I added an old style NASA patch to my collection.
This is the ubiquitous “FLY” design, seen on the novelty license plates of a multitude of pilots’ cars. I bought this patch when I lived in Orlando, Florida and was going to helicopter flight school.
Not terribly interesting, but these “Maltese cross” patches used to frame the name of a club I was in on the back of a jacket yonks ago. Because, I don’t know, whatever.
This is, obviously, a Peace Corps patch. I got it from a campus rep who was tabling at the Kansas Union at KU. The Peace Corps is something I am seriously considering at the moment, having established an application profile with them and everything. I don’t know that is what I’ll end up doing, but it would be a good thing, I think. But the rep gave me the patch for my collection, and here it is. Maybe someday I’ll get to wear it…
If you have to ask, it won’t mean anything to you anyway. This is one of several patches I had made for myself. It was an early effort, so don’t judge it too harshly. I know I could do tons better at this same design if I did it right now, but I really have no reason to, really. I wore this on my maroon flight that was my scooter club jacket.
Another patch I had made, for myself and a few select friends. Design based on the company logo and in honor of the Ruger 10/22, a very awesome little rifle.
This will be familiar to anybody who’s read a few of my blog posts! This is a patch I had made of the Romantic Antihero bind rune. This bind rune is one of two maker’s marks I’ve adopted and used for a long while now. I had the patch made purely just to put into my collection; I doubt I will ever sew it on anything.
Speaking of runes, here’s a patch my friend Mark Stinson gave me that features the Tiwaz rune. It anchors the so-called Nine Noble Virtues of Asatru. I’m not big into rendering philosophy into easily consumed lists, but I liked the patch, and Mark, know I liked such things, gifted it to me, which was very much appreciated.
This patch, since we’re on the subject of Asatru and things related, is a modern imagining of the fabled Raven Banner. They make flags of these and I’m dying to have one, but the patch is cool too, obviously.
Push the button, Frank! I don’t remember if Dr. Clayton Forrester wore a patch like this on the tv show, but everyone cosplaying him does. I was a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during it’s original run on the Comedy Channel, so I had to have this when I saw it. I wasn’t really fond of the SciFi Channel’s seasons, but by then I hadn’t been watching regularly for a long time anyway, so I was kind of part of the problem to begin with. But for the first two or three seasons I never missed a show. Just recently I attended a Riff Traxx life showing of Manos, The Hands of Fate and loved it. It was the second one I’ve been to, and I can’t think of a single reason not to keep going to them.
That’s right, I am throwing my vote behind the “star points up” faction. Here is a Browncoats SSI from the television show Firefly. I came to this show late, being forced to watch a friend’s DVDs well after the show was off the air, and I am glad I did.
So I thought, might as well get the Blue Sun patch, too. It’s cool in it’s own right, and I think I actually like it better than the Browncoats SSI.
Another sci-fi show patch. This could easily go into hundreds if not thousands of words, but don’t hate on Carl for what he did. Robotech changed my life, yo. It’s easy to look at it from this century and criticize it, but I was a kid in the 1980s watching this during its original run. Before that I had been a huge fan of Voltron, but Robotech, for all it’s strange edits, bad VA, ridiculous narration voice-overs, and convoluted script, STILL blew anything else on television out of the water where animation was concerned. There was just nothing like it at all, and I still remember getting up early as hell to watch it, sitting there eating cold cereal and then BAM! Roy Fokker bleeds out in Claudia’s room, and suddenly space wars with cool robots got real. I’m going through the Macross titles even now, seeing it as it was originally meant to be, but this kid from the 80s will always be grateful to Macek and Harmony Gold for “real robot” into my young life.
Any regular visitors to RA will know that I am something of a Chaos Space Marine nut (to move on to another area of my scifi fandom). I jumped at the chance to buy into the merch drive of my favorite Warhammer 40,000 “power armor” dedicated internet forum.
Continuing with Warhammer 40,000 stuff, whenever Games Workshop opens a new store they have exclusive collector’s stuff for the lucky few who get there before it runs out. Being absolutely mad about patches, and arguably exponentially more mad about 40k, I was ecstatic when I learned GW was opening a hobby store in my metro area. I got there ten minutes after the doors opened, ten minutes, and they were already out of the exclusive patches! Luckily a friend got there before doors opened and picked up the exclusives, giving me the patch and keeping the poster (which is what they wanted). So lesson learned, get there early. That said, it’s really kind of a naff design, but I’m very happy to have it in my collection.
Apparently GW has “soft” openings and “grand” openings for their hobby centers, space about three months apart. I have no idea why. But at the grand opening they had the things I really wanted, which was the crux patch and access to the limited availability flags (more on that in a mo’). No mucking about this time, I was there just over an hour early for the grand opening at Blue Ridge Crossing GW. We were the second group there, and not long after there was a line extending out into the parking lot. But I got my Crux Terminatus, and I got my limited availability Imperial Guard flag:
Which will someday feature in the blog posts I plan on doing about my vexillology interest, but will put here for now.
So that’s it for miscellaneous patches for now, though it is inevitable that there will be more miscellaneous category blog postings, as I have a deep seated love for these things.
Reviresco!
Romantic Antihero™ 