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…
