About to be felted

Here is my next project, something little. I decided to enjoy a simple knitting assignment, at the same time planning for something I can really use--a glasses case. So I have knitted this pouch (about 5x7") and will felt it tomorrow. If it shrinks up as much as I hope it will, by about half, I will block it and let it dry as a pouch/envelope shape, and then I want to stitch in a glasses cleaning cloth on both sides of the interior, so that they are always rubbing against something that will keep them LESS smeary. At the top--I am thinking of Velcro actually, but I might play that part by ear (or should I say eye?).

Wish me luck!

Jordana Paige and me = happy!

If you see my post about the final rows of the baby blanket below, you will note that the yarn store owner, Hollis at Full Thread Ahead, was a kind soul who took my defective yarn back and gave me a working skein. No trouble, no hassles, no anything. Top it off with the fact that she had also given us 20%-off coupons for the store, for participating in WWKIP day.

So, I saw that the fates had allied themselves in favor of my purchasing a Jordana Paige knitting bag. And I looked at two and decided on this one. It's as big as a Gladstone doctor's bag, and I could keep three knitting projects in it easily and still have room for my small purse. If you see in the first photo the small zipper bag, it is anchored near the top so that small items can be easily reached, like my Chibi needle holder and scissors, my Kacha-Kacha, and other vital things.

There are zillions of smart pockets, slots, and devices for making knitting types happy. I could run my yarn through one of those snap loops you can see above, so that it didn't get tangled up in another ball of yarn or etc. I think there are spots for straights too, but I'm not quite sure if that is their real intent.

It closes like the purses my mom used to have in the 60s (pocketbooks, she called them), and on the outside, if you see in the picture where the buckle thing is, it has what amounts to a small purse with lots of slots and things, so I could really take things out of my purse and keep them there. Then I would always have my knitting because I would always have my purse attached to the JP bag. :^) That could be good, could be bad, depending on my strength of will. Knit at the supermarket? Knit in classes? Knit while waiting for x daughter to finish x appointment? Sure! Like a good girl scout, always prepared.

Finishing the baby blanket--two mistakes and two lessons

Here it is, the finished baby blanket. I am really happy with it in most respects. The texture is baby-friendly and cushy, the colors bright and nontraditional (for a newborn anyway), and the size perfect for anyone just born to about age 4 (after that, perhaps as a cape?).

Now for the last 1/6 of the blanket's travails: I was at the Knit in Public Day getting going on the last skein of my Karaoke yarn, when the yarn switched from variegated over inches or feet and became two strands of vastly different colors, almost like a candy cane effect, only with different colors. It was totally wrong, and yet it took me a few rows of this to convince me that I wasn't going to be able to use it (Egypt and de land of de Nile, etc.). But ta-da! I was with more experienced knitters, and ta-da! I was near the yarn store I'd bought the Karaoke from. So . . . I had help frogging the bad yarn out, and reorienting my needles in the stitches (now I know how!), and a kindly yarn merchant who offered to replace the skein with another and return the defective yarn to Karaoke for replacement. Wheeeew. Lesson 1 learned. I'd need this new info again very soon because . . .

Then I went home, bravely began again on the last section, but about 12 rows into it, I realized that a glass of wine and knitting are not always a wise combination. I had dropped a stitch in two places. So I tried catching the stitches and corrected it (great, right?), but it just looked tight and wrong, and then I counted my stitches total. Also wrong, too many. Now I might have pulled out clumps of hair and worked on my primal scream. But it was, as Jimmy Buffet once said, "my own damn fault."

So with the new working knowledge of frogging and reorienting stitches correctly, and courage left over from the wine, :^), I tore out about twelve rows and started again.

I finished it without incident, finished off the threads and joins etc., de-cat-haired it, and took a few pix. Now to wrap it up festively and mail it to the boss with the new baby boy. I hope they will love it, and that it not being machine washable will not be a detraction.

The other thing I learned from a mistake (why are mistakes so much more instructive than warnings???) is that variegated yarn such as this needs to be knitted with an eye toward some evenness of the striping. I don't know why I didn't see the huge blue stripe when I knitted it, wider than all the others by far. Ah well. I have successfully knitted my errors into it, so I won't offend Allah, and now the baby will have that much more protection.

I am so good at this sort of skating!