knitted glasses case

This is my last post for a while now, I`m going on holiday tomorrow - yay!  And I thought I`d leave you with a farewell prezzie, to make my almost 3 week absence more bearable *pretends not to hear the sighs of relief*

The other day I decided to make a new case for my sunglasses, instead of the cheap plastic rubbish I got from somewhere as a freebie and which I hated with a passion - not only was it ugly but my shades always fell out of it too, so I might as well have chucked them into my handbag the way they were, the case was useless anyway.

I punched in `(sun)glasses case knitting pattern` into Google and to my great surprise, I was struggling to find anything useful. Being short on time, I decided to design one for myself - and here`s the result:

I used double knitting because I wanted a nice thickness to protect my shades, and I sewed the two double-knitted pieces together so as to show both colour combos. I don`t know how to make clever PDF, etc. attachments, but I thought I`d share the pattern in case there are others out there, looking for a simple glasses knit pattern - so here`s a photo of it:

As you can see, the design is 22 sts wide and 9 sts high - to this I added 4-4 sts on the sides (thus casting on 30 sts) and 4-4 rows above and below. Using standard DK yarn and size 7 needles (4.5 mm), my glasses case measures 17x9 cm (7"x3 1/2"). And, as I didn`t want my shades to slip out of this one too, I finished it with a short piece of I-cord, sewn into a loop, so you can pull the opening tight, like on a drawstring bag.

Hope all of you are having a fab summer holiday, see you again in August!  

WARNING: this will be a very long post, with lots of links and some photos :)

Before I say what I want to say, I`ve just got to say this: I won again!! Same as with buses and hedgehogs: now two wins come along at once (of course, entering competitions helps). Last night I got an email from Celtic Rose Needlecraft, with 4 PDF patterns attached - Dartmoor Heather, Moonlight On The Shore, Cottage Garden Pond and Daffodil Wood. I`m so chuffed! I just wish I had more time... or more hands... or both... I think if I ever get round to do it, I`ll start with Moonlight On The Shore. (Note to self: Don`t forget to write Thank You email to CRN!).

And now, what I originally wanted to write about: visiting other blogs. The other day my dear friend Katya (http://astitchingtime.blogspot.com) has already touched on this topic when she apologised, unnecessarily, for leaving a longer-than-usual comment after one of my posts. Unnecessarily, because - don`t get me wrong, I`m, like everybody else, glad to receive any signs of appreciation, even if it`s just a four-letter word (I meant `Nice!`, naughty!) but I simply LOVE long, personal comments where we can engage in a friendly conversation. At the same time, I realise that that`s what emails and personal FB messages are for, and maybe not everyone`s interested in the above-mentioned conversation... luckily, this blog is MINE so I can do whatever I want with it, so here`s what I didn`t want to clog my friend`s comments with about her book review:

I`ve been meaning to read J. K Rowling`s `next book`, i.e. the one that came after Harry Potter for ages, just like one day I intend to read The Host by Stephanie Meyer, her `next book` after the Twilight Saga, because I`m always curious how an author is trying to break down the fences their epic first work has built around them. But I have to be honest, after reading Katya`s review of The Casual Vacancy, I might not rush too hurriedly into this novel - I tell you why. Because with every year passing, I notice that I`m less and less tolerant towards sad things. At the moment, I can (just) cope with watching the news every night but I can see a future where even that`ll be too much for me - if I picture my supersensitive, weepy future self, then look back at my Dostoevsky and Camus reading, Goddard and Becket watching teenage self, I guess I`m about halfway through the scale. The little time I have for guilty pleasures like reading, I try to fill with happy  and easy stuff, so apart from perennial favourites, like Pride and Prejudice, I read a lot of historical novels - do you think it`s cowardice that I seem to escape to bygone ages, when the world seemed a less complicated, nicer place? (I know it wasn`t, not really, but you still get the illusion).

Anyway, enough of the heavy stuff, back to other people`s blogs. If you haven`t visited Minnie`s blog (http://minnie-allxxs.blogspot.com) yet, do it now... I mean, after you finished reading this! You know how sometimes you regularly check out a blog and the person`s WIP photo never seems to change? (Like my DaVinci, lol!). Not Minnie`s, uh-huh. She must be stitching 20 hours a day and I love ALL her WIPs, which is rare but I guess we have a very similar taste, I`d gladly take on any of the patterns she`s working on. The other day she shared photos of some of her finishes and I cheekily tried to get her to give me her African ladies cushion (my attempts failed miserably, btw). Shame, it`d have looked so neat with my Joan Elliott design, which I managed to frame since I posted that picture:

And so as not to leave you without news of La Scapigliata: although I haven`t worked on it since last Friday (on the upside, though, I finished Santa so I only have a robin and a snowman to stitch - oh, that reminds me! Now that the weather`s getting summery and I`m stitching Santas, the Fathers` Day hot air balloon cards I stitched last Christmas are in the shops! Sorry for digressing but I have to quickly add a photo here):

Cross Stitch Card Shop issue 90

Where was I? Yes, La Scapigliata. The good news is, I had another look and I hope I was panicking for nothing because the way I calculate it, there should be at least a 2" border so that`s fine. And the teaser from my last post: once I finish this, I shall stitch another version of the same painting, this time designed by one of my fellow model stitchers, Pippa Slack from Stitching Dreams. Her chart contains 22 colours as opposed to Maria Diaz`s 8 - I can`t wait to see the difference between the two! It`s quite a while away yet but rest assured, there will be plenty of progress photos - I`m going to enjoy that, a nice change from all this super-secretive magazine stitching! Obviously, I have to finish the commission works first, then my own 1-year-old DaVinci - but after that I hope not to have too many distractions (luckily, I got a fairly lax deadline from Pippa: "sometime within the next couple of years", lol!). And talking about distractions: have a look at this!!! I can`t believe they didn`t give her a name, she`s OBVIOUSLY a Gloria?!? Can`t wait to knit her!!

Alan Dart`s Heatwave Hippo from Simply Knitting Magazine Issue 107

I`m such a winner!

Look what postie`s brought yesterday!

I entered the competitions a few weeks ago and I quite forgot about the whole thing. What a lovely surprise!

Yesterday was a stitchy day through and through: after receiving this kit, I got an email from Twilleys of Stamford (new commission in the post) and with just the odd tea-and-pee break, I stitched for 10 hours non-stop. My deadline for the Cross Stitch Gold cushion is next Wednesday and I`m beginning to have this panicky feeling in my stomach - there`s still quite a lot to do! Sorry, I can`t show you any pictures of it... it`s a shame because it looks gorgeous! And, weirdly, bigger from the computer desk... hmm, maybe I can do this...? OK, back to work!