Monthly Archives: April 2012

Whew!

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I’m glad to be home.

The box bags were a hit.  But I don’t think I will be making any more for a while.

Charleston, South Carolina is a great place to visit.   We toured the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, the USS Laffey, went to the Open Air Market in downtown Charleston, took a carriage ride through Charleston, toured Fort Sumter, dipped our toes in the Atlantic Ocean, visited the Citadel, went on a nature ride through Magnolia Plantation and a boat ride through the swamp lands there as well.  We saw a couple of dolphins and lots of alligators.  We all had a great time.

Knitting?  Nada.  No knitting happened.  Our days were too full and we were too tired to even look at the pattern let alone get out our yarn or needles and cast on.

I drove part of the way on Sunday and finished the trip on Monday with a detour to IKEA in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I did the return trip in one day.

Total distance: 1,188 miles.

Total time behind the wheel: 19 hours and 28 minutes.

Filled

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The box bags I talked about yesterday will be with hand sanitizer, purse-sized tissue pack, a bottle of water, a package of peanut butter cookies, and Tastykakes.***  If you’ve never had a Tastykake, you’re missing out on some fabulous goodness.  My favorites are the Butterscotch Krimpets and the Cream Filled Buttercream Cup Cakes.

***I did not receive any compensation nor am I a paid spokesperson for TastyKake.  I just wish I was.

Box bags all in a row

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My friend is taking her 8th graders to Charleston, South Carolina this coming week and I’m meeting them there.  I’ve never been to Charleston before and am really looking forward to going.

I made box bags for all the students.  The tutorials I used can be found here and here.  Remember my quandary about the fabric?

The final count: 4 in the bicycle fabric, 12 in the granite fabric.

The bicycle ones have all different colors for the lining.  The granite ones have 4 different colors between the 12.

If I ever decide to make 5, 16, or 45 of the same thing again (and I really hope I don’t), remind me the make them ALL. THE. SAME!  This changing colors of thread for each lining color was a pain, or as I like to call it, a PITA.  You can figure out the “A”.

I do like them though.

You’ll be able to see what they’ll be filled with tomorrow.

Houston, we may have a problem

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Silly me.  I assumed something and we know what that means.

My iPad cover swatch.  Remember it?

I pinned the felted swatch to the cover on my ironing board to dry so I could use the squares as my measurement.

Great plan.

Those squares are one inch so my swatch would be five inches square.  And I really had to tug to get the width to five inches.

Mr. Aitch’s cover was 48-49 stitches so I thought I would make this one a few stitches bigger since I was doing a two-color design and I had to work within the color pattern.  I cast on 26 stitches for this swatch since I planned on 52 stitches for the width.  Wonderful.  I needed the cover to be about 10 inches wide.  This was going to be a piece of cake.

After felting and measuring the wet swatch, I went on my merry way.  Now with only a few more rows left to knit I’ll be ready to felt in no time.  Then I decided to remeasure the dry swatch one more time.  The swatch is not five inches square.  The swatch is 4.5 inches square and the finished cover just might not be wide enough.  How can this be?  It must have been stretched so much that once it was unpinned, it relaxed.  Relaxed a half inch.  Which translates to one inch on the finished project.

Had I realized this before I cast on, I could have just made it eight stitches wider.  But n-o-o-o.  I had to hurry up and cast on before checking and double checking my swatch.  Length-wise there is no problem.  I can knit a few more repeats.  Width-wise is the issue.

I’m going away next week and really, really, really wanted to have this cover finished for my iPad.

Do I keep going as though nothing is wrong and hope and pray (and tug, and tug, and tug) that it will fit?

Do I pick up some stitches along the sides and make a gusset-type of thing?

What would you do?