Month: December 2004

For my sister’s bday, I’d made her a little Sophie bag (around the time that my parents were here visiting). Now that she has it, I can finally post about it. 🙂

I made the bag using Cascade 220 (of course), in Black, medium rose (#9424) and light pink (#8114), on size 10 needles. I made a pocket big enough for an id or credit card on the inside by picking up 19 stitches, knitting 20 rows, then binding off and sewing up the sides. Here are the exterior and interior before felting:

I ran it through two cycles so that the stitches would be completely invisible, which led to a smaller Sophie than others than I’ve seen. For comparison’s sake, here are before-and-after measurements of different parameters of the purse:

	Prefelt:	Postfelt:
Base->Top:	10″	5.25″
Circ. of Opening:	17″	14″
Base: Width: Height:	7.5″ 6.25″	6.75″ 4.25″
Pocket: Width: Height:	5.25″ 4.25″	3.75″ 3″
Straps:	28″	19″

I was really happy with the result overall. If I could go back I would have made the stripes a little wider and the pocket a little deeper. Here it is blocking:

In the foreground, you can see the pieces of a flower that I made to go with it. The flower turned out to be much too big, so I made an even smaller piece to add, which is awaiting felting in this picture. Here’s the finished flower:

Instructions for the finished flower (composed of a dark pink “smaller flower” and a light pink “larger flower”) are here:

Smaller flower:

Knit 5 petals in color A:

Cast on 5 stitches, knit 4 rows in stockinette.

Row 5: knit 1, CDD, knit 1

Row 6: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.

(CDD = Centered double decrease: sl 2 stitches to right needle, pull

right stitch over left. sl st back to left needle. pull left stich

over right. RS: K remaining stitch. WS: P remaining stitch)

Sew in any loose ends, then take a new piece of yarn, thread it through the base of all the petals, and pull tight. The petal should dimple. Sew back and forth to close up any gaps.

Larger Flower:

Knit 5 petals in Color B:

Cast on 7 stitches, knit 6 rows of stockinette.

Row 7: K2, CDD, K2

Row 8: K1, CDD, K1

Row 9: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.

Sew in loose ends, then bind together as for smaller flower.

Leaf:

Cast on 9. Knit 9 rows. Dec 2 every other row, bind off last stitch.

Sew in ends.

Felt, felt, felt.

Trim off excess fuzzies, then sew (with thread) the two flowers together, the leaf to the back of the flower, and a bar pin or clasp onto the back. I added metallic thread and 3 beads as an accent to the front. The finished flower is about 3″ x 3.5″.

If you want to make the larger petals visible in the blocking photo, just keep increasing your cast-on size by two.

Yeehaw! With the impending holidays and my newfound dearth of projects (I finished the red hat & scarf, but haven’t sewn in ends. pictures tomorrow?), I’ve decided that my “no new yarn until I get a job” rule only applies to projects for myself. 🙂 Ahh, rationalization.

The really exciting part of this is that Kevin mentioned in passing that he wouldn’t be adverse to hand-knit socks. This was incredibly exciting news to me for several reasons. First, on a knitting level, I feel like knitting socks is the way in which you prove that you have truly arrived. The holy grail, if you will. However, I don’t like any of the sock patterns for myself, except maybe for these. So, I’m delighted to get to try my skill and *not* have to wear the result. 🙂 Second, most of his previous girlfriends have been knitters (he obviously has good taste), and so I didn’t want to duplicate their past projects. I’m also a firm believer in the sweater curse… it may have been two and a half years, and we may be living together, but you don’t start a sweater unless you have a ring on your finger. No need to jinx these things.

So, I went down to Kirkland Yarn & Stitchery on the way home from other errands and found this yarn (Patons Kroy Socks 4-ply, color #54108) and the Patons Classics Winter Warmth pattern book. The sock pattern I have in mind has the blue arrow pointing toward it.

Kevin gave the go-ahead. Here he is with his future-socks (though it’s hard to tell if the yarn or the eggnog is the reason for the smile…) Woohoo for new projects.

I also picked up some Plymouth Encore for one of the gifts on my list. The colors are a neutral beige (#240), a nearly-navy blue (#848), and a slightly tweedy medium blue (#658, which looks much more light blue/gray in real life than in this shot). Expect more info on this project in a few weeks. 😛

Kevin’s downstairs working on dinner so I’d better run, but I had to share my new-yarn fun!!

I’ve been restraining myself from posting about the fishtank because I feel like it’s more interesting to me than to anyone reading, but I can’t help it, the thing is too cool.

Leah and Ginger were laughing at me & Kevin last night for our watching chairs…

I wish I could say that we don’t really spend all of our time sitting there, but I really can’t. 🙂 We bought new lights the weekend before thanksgiving since our used bulbs really seemed weak and we weren’t seeing much plant growth. The lights are JBJ Formosa DX which are two blue actinic and two white bulbs. The difference from the old ones is surreal, and our tank is so alive now. We also bought a dude crew — hermit crabs and snails to clean our rocks, substrate and tank. They all seem happy and are doing a great job keeping all of our new plants in check. Here’s a sample view of one of the most popular rocks (you can see three hermit crabs and a snail covered in purple algae — I circled them in yellow so that they’d be easier to find):

Then we have this guy, who spends all of his time eating (as opposed to most of our snails who spend all their time looking asleep):

He delighted us (I’m serious. we were entranced.) last night by standing up and waving his antennae around. We couldn’t decide if it was a king of the mountain display or gastronomic distress, but it was fun to watch.

We also have a neat little double fan which started growing on our rocks once the new lights were in place:

We don’t know what it is (it’s about 3/4″ tall right now, and deep green), so we need to find some sort of salt water algae field guide, but i’m hoping that it continues growing. So neat.

Here are two other unidentified algae colonies:

The green algae on the left has globes between 1 and 4 mm, and sticks to the rock. We have several groups of it. I think that it’s some sort of single celled bubble algae. The hermit crabs and snails munch stuff off of it, but haven’t eaten any of the bubbles. I’m hoping that it spreads.

My favourite algae is the purple tubes on the right. When the lights are off or any animals come near it, it shrinks into itself and becomes a little purple tube. This blurry photo is of five of them, when they’re open. The biggest is 2 or 3 mm across. The centers are a greenish/yellow, and the edges are surrounded by a very fine orange fringe. I don’t know what they are, but they’re amazing, and I get a lot of milage out of watching them.

It isn’t so hard to see why I spend so much time sitting in the chairs watching, right? 😛

Our water quality is looking good, so we are looking at getting our first fish this weekend!! Maybe a neon goby or two?

Leah and Ginger came over tonight to learn to knit! Ginger had taught herself to knit before, but needed refreshing, and Leah was a newbie. Both of them are quick learners. 🙂

Leah laced her two squares together to make a lovely pair of earmuffs. Here she is, modelling them (“brrr!”):