FO: Doctor Who Bag

Pattern: The Little Coco Bag by Kate Atherley
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport
Needles: US 7 (maybe? I didn’t write it down)

Welcome to another installment of FO Friday!!! Yeah, it’s been a while.

The finished product!

I finally finished and photographed the Doctor Who bag! It’s not that it was a complex or difficult pattern, but I kept putting it aside between steps. Knit the bag and stash it away a couple months before felting. Now that it is felted, stick it in a corner for a long time until you get to sewing the lining. Now that the lining is done, do something else for another month before you stitch it in. If I had actually stopped my dithering, it would have been done much sooner. But dither I did.

My phone holder inside the bag.

I used The Little Coco Bag which I found on Ravelry. It is simple, easy to understand, and really creates a beautiful bag, but in hindsight, I would have done a different pattern. Having the loops go through the fabric of the bag rather than be part of the top made  the lining appear a bit odd to me, because it’s not closer to the edge. It’s not bad, just odd. And to be fair, it is growing on me (which means I’m totally wishy washy).

So pretty.

For anyone who is not cool enough to have watched the Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who, the pattern is same as his famous scarf. Well, the original, anyway. I used the leftover yarn from the Doctor Who scarf from several years ago and followed the scarf color pattern. I did halve the number of rows for each color because I was doing stockinette rather than garter and I was also worried about not having enough yarn. I had plenty.

What it will look like when I wear it. Do you not see the cool spewing from this bag?

I bought fabric called Timey Wimey from Spoonflower to continue the Doctor Who theme. I of course couldn’t just do a simple lining. Why would I do that. Instead I created my first ever pocket and added a slot for my phone.

Pocket!

I still want to add a clasp to close the bag and need to add Velcro to the fabric that goes over the phone, but it’s done enough to use. I’m super happy with how it turned out. I haven’t used it yet, but plan to soon. The best part? I only lost about a gallon of blood sewing it together!

Someone helped model the pre-felted bag

More photos can be found on flicker.

FO: Charity Hat

Pattern: Marcie’s Epilogue
Yarn: Forest Edge Farm Angora
Needles: ??? US 10, maybe? I need to keep better track of these things.

Warning: bad phone picture to port.

It’s FO Friday!!! Do you see what I did there? I declared Fridays to be FO Fridays!!! I suspect it’s only going to last about 4 weeks, maybe 5, until I run through the queue of finished projects. I doubt I’m going to keep up the trend, but still. Work with me.

Remember  Operation Provide Warmth? I think they are still accepting items. I made this hat for them in hopes someone who is going through an extremely rough winter would have something warm and super snuggly on their heads. And this yarn is super snuggly. A coworker gave the angora to me when she realized she was allergic. It’s like petting the actual bunny it came from.

Last I heard from the OPW site (which I think was around Christmas), people are still without power. That’s right. No power in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. So if you can knit/crochet something really, really fast go do it and send it to the coordinator.

Oh look, I’m trying to look like a teenager.

 

Well, I’m behind

Dear 2012, Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

2012 was not a good year. It could have been worse, but now it’s over and I’m done with it. It’s time to move on to 2013 and hope for better. I’m not going to dwell on the past.

Yeah, right. Who am I kidding.

So last year I started the year with goals–go through my yarn stash, exercise consistently, and post at least once a week. So how did I do? Meh. Will I do them again? Maybe.

Goal 1:  Yarn

I have no idea how many items of yarn I had listed in Ravelry (I’m Kisknit over there, if you care) when I started my de-stashing endeavor. I think it was around 70, but I can’t find the exact number and the child is sleeping and I have 30 more things to do before she wakes up and darn, I’m hungry. *ahem* I pretty much followed the rules. I only bought yarn if I had a specific project to do, and I tried to limit myself at yarn fests. I had gotten myself down to around 60 items by Rhinebeck, but that and some projects have brought me back to 68. I could blame the Cookie A. Sock Club for my stash going back up, but that was a gift so it doesn’t count. Really, the culprit was Rhinebeck. I did get 6 skeins after all, but I was mostly in control and had projects in mind for all but 1!

Does this read as pathetic and addicted as it sounds in my head? For 2013, I’m going to keep stash busting. I’m not doing any yarn clubs this year so hopefully I will get below 60. That’s my goal anyway. That and to limit the yarn to the yarn bin. See, a while back, the Husband’s parents bought an old, wood magazine, um, thing from an antique store and gave it to him. He threw my yarn in. Originally, the rule was the yarn had to be contained in that bin. I think that lasted about 6 months, and then it spilled into the cedar chest as well as the yarn bin. When OP was mobile, she LOVED the yarn and would pull it and hand it to people, throw it, etc. She was reasonably good with it, but after a while, I decided she would be doing damage and put all the yarn in the cedar chest.

You can sort of see the bin in this picture.

Today, I pulled out the yarn bin, because OP’s getting very good about leaving things alone (we’ll see how long it lasts) and we could use the extra storage in the cedar chest for blankets and the like. So my goal is to eventually get back to a stash that only fits in that. I figure by 2021 I’ll be there.

Goal 2: Exercise consistently

This was hit or miss in 2012, and while that’s not a bad thing because sometimes life is hit or miss, I’d still like to be a bit more consistent and not put work before my health. I did, however do a half-marathon in October and I mostly liked it. I liked the running part, not really the race part. I’m pulling back on races for the time being and just getting out to run. I actually LOVE going out to run for 8 miles. Yeah, I think I’m a pod person too.

Goal 3: Update once a week

Hold on while I start laughing…still laughing…I can’t stop…I have to pee!

Yeah, that didn’t happen. I would like to be more consistent here because one cannot dominate the world, if one does not post on a regular basis. It’s like, political science or something. We’ll see what happens this year.

I think I pulled a muscle from laughing so hard…

FO: Doctor Who Potholders

Pattern: My own
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Spor
Needles: ??? US 8, maybe?

Several years ago, I made a Doctor Who scarf for a friend. As most projects go, I had extra yarn. Unfortunately, since the Doctor Who scarf uses 7 different colors, I had a lot of extra yarn, but not really a lot of a single color. I had a skein of purple, part of a red, two green, etc. So, what to do with an odd assortment? I made a felted Doctor Who bag which I’m still finishing up. I thought for sure it would finish the yarn I had left. Yeah right. Doctor Who yarn is much like the TARDIS–bigger on the inside than it looks. So I thought I would use up the excess yarn by making potholders.

So three potholders later, and I’ve used up the yarn. Except for some odds and ends that OP uses to pretend she’s knitting. I did one mitered potholder, although it seemed to get drunk at the end (or my gauge went crazy) because it was a diamond shape. Which, quite honestly, I didn’t care about too much because it was getting felted and I have scissors! The other two were just random patterns since I wasn’t sure how much yarn I’d have left. And since I thought teach potholder would be the last, I didn’t want to rely too heavily on a set pattern.

If you’ve never made or used felted pot holders, do it. They are AWESOME.  They block the heat. repel water, and are easy to clean. Extra bonus is that you can try techniques you’ve been thinking about and not worry too much if it goes to Hell. The only thing I hate is that I didn’t make them sooner.

FO: Norwegian Star Scarf

Pattern: My own
Yarn: Cascade 220 Sport
Needles: US 5

It took almost a year, but I did it. I finished the scarf and I’m very happy with it. Originally, when the Husband and I designed the pattern, we originally planned on fringe. Then, we made it a smidge long so I did a single crochet on the end. I like that better because I hate making fringe and I never was thrilled with the idea of it.

The scarf definitely would have gone faster if not for the sheer boredom inherent in scarves. Is it just me or do you also want to burn your scarf about halfway through making it no matter how intricate the pattern, too?

The Husband says he loves it. However, because I knit him a scarf we will have a warm winter.