Tag Archives: knitting

Whew!

Posted on by
4

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.

Houston, we may have a problem

Posted on by
13

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?

The CCM hat decision

Posted on by
4

Remember a few weeks ago when I finished my Carrie Cahill-Mulligan hat?

Well, I finally decided what I was going to do with the brim.

Paisley.  I love paisley and found some generic paisley shapes to use as my inspiration.  My plan is to embroider eight paisley designs around the entire brim but I’m going to start at the front and work my way around from side to side so I don’t have to have it completely finished before wearing it.

Yes, I know it’s April and we’ve had some unseasonably warm weather of late (90 degrees yesterday!!) but I don’t want to wait until next fall before I return to find it still naked of all embellishment.

I love this hat.

And you can have your very own!

It’s easy.

Go to Carrie’s website and:

  1. Order a kit.  Or two.  Or three.  You get to select the colors of yarn you want.
  2. Buy a gift certificate for a kit or a hat for a dear friend, your spouse, yourself, or anyone.
  3. Buy a hat.

I know that Carrie and Andy, her husband, would really appreciate it right now.  Go on, check it out.

Have you read it yet?

Posted on by
2

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Mr. Aitch got the e-book version for his tablet a few weeks ago.  I borrowed his tablet, started reading the book on Tuesday and finished it today. 

Wow.

Some reviews were not favorable but I enjoyed the book.  I’m looking forward to the second book in the series called Catching Fire.

Now that that is out of the way, I can concentrate on the iPad cover.    Since I’m doing a stockinette stitch and a two-color houndstooth design on this one instead of one color and the garter stitch, I thought I should felt another swatch.  The swatch is finished and felted.  I just have to make sure the two-color knitting it very loose on the back so the stitches don’t pull too close together while being felted.  I may decide to knit a couple of stitches along the sides for a small gusset to make it a little wider just in case my knitting is too tight.

I think the houndstooth pattern will show up nicely once it’s finished.