Ok, so Hannah’s birthday was the day before she left for her wedding. That wasn’t a surprise, so I could have worked on her present well in advance, but… I didn’t. I was trying to think of something Hello Kitty to get her, since she’s obsessed, but I wanted to make it personalized. I decided on a knitting pattern.
It was the day of Happy Flower Knitting. Everyone kept saying that it was ok to screw up the color knitting a little bit, because, hey, it was going to be felted! Kristi and I were talking about it and I was thinking of maybe a hat, but I’ve heard intarsia in the round is not fun, so Kristi suggested something felted. An idea was born: Hannah’s Hello Kitty Knitting Notions Bag.
Since Hannah’s a beginner knitter, I decided to test knit the pattern before giving it to her (in kit form). What you see is one half of the bag, sewn up on either side, with kitty on the front and pink on the back. A pink zipper is to be sewn in the top to keep her knitting notions inside.
It went ok, but carrying the black across the face in the back was a bit tight. I thought it’d all turn out ok in the felting process…
It didn’t.
My assumed felting shrinking proportions were wrong. I’m not going to carry the black across the back either, since it made kitty’s face all fuzzy black. I re-calculated the size of the chart, based on actual shrinking, and intended to test-knit again, but then I got tendonitis. Hannah was happy with her kit anyway, and is still waiting for me to try out the pattern first…
Finally, Corsica is available in sizes 32 [34, 36, 38, 40, 42]!
Buy the pattern here!
Check it out on Ravelry!
Check out the photo set on Flickr!
While I’m talking about May, I might as well post about Hannah’s wedding shawl. Cindy posted about this a long time ago – it was her idea, and she wrote an entertaining post about it. However, I did take my own pictures, and you don’t all read her blog, so here’s the story: Hannah announced her wedding about 10 days beforehand. Somehow, I came up with the whole Cala Lily boquet thing… before I heard about the shawl. Cindy really wanted to knit Hannah a wedding shawl, but knew she couldn’t do it alone in 10 days, so she recruited trusty lace knitters Cookie & Kristi, Jeni, and myself. We each knit a section of the shawl, and then we grafted them all together.
Here’s my section:
A detail…
The 3 pieces I grafted together (Cookie’s, Kristi’s & mine - that’s what really killed me!)…
And finally Hannah opening the shawl…
And putting it on…at her birthday party, nonetheless!
So, what did I decide to give Hannah for her birthday? Just you wait and see…
I finally got a Flickr pro account, so I uploaded all of my BobaKnit Retreat Photos (unedited). Here are a few to rouse your interest… the rest can be found here.
Vineyards…
Lunch at the CIA.
Dessert at the CIA.
Crazy Corkscrews!
I’ve been working on sizing Corsica for about 15-20 minutes a day, and I’m almost done! Ye faithful blog readers will be the first to know when I finally do finish…
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