Key Cover

Key Cover
Originally uploaded by jwordsmith.

Ha! I love having a useful hobby.

The handle came off my car key. It's one of those big black keys with electronics in it and a key part that whips out like a switchblade. It also had a handle on one end that let me attach it to my key ring.

Then there was an incident with a small boy and my keychain hooked to my belt loops and...now the key has no handle.

I've been carrying it loose for a couple of weeks and it was driving me insane (always having to search every pocket of every garment, never knowing where it was when I was out...).

Surely, I thought, knitting could solve my dilemma.

So I picked up my #1 Addi circular needles and some lovely fine merino I've had since I came down with my latest bout of knitting (four years ago) and cast on eight stitches. Then I turned them around and picked up eight more from the bottom.

I knitted a couple of rounds of 2x2 rib, then decided it was going to be too small. Did I frog? I did not.

I added a couple of stitches in the purls at the each row (I was working with the magic loop method) and kept knitting.

When my key fitted inside with a bit spare to suck in the top, I cast off all but two stitches, made a little i-cord loop, knitted that back into the neck of the thing and tucked in my ends.

I'm pretty proud of myself.

I went to the grocery store tonight and was able to find my key, point it at the car to lock and unlock it and know that my key was hanging from my keyring where it was supposed to be.

I have to take it out to drive the car, of course, but that's OK. I know where it is when I'm driving!

I reckon if the ribbing gets slack I'll thread some elastic through the neck and still be able to use it.

Big lace shawls are lovely, but this? This was quick, utilitarian, and very, very satisfying.

And hopefully will stop me locking the 1 yr old in the car again. (A-hem.)

Adding Converts

I did it.

It was my first time.

I feel like a real grown-up knitter now.

I taught my friend to knit.

It totally did not push it. She came over (from the other side of the country, no less) and more or less instantly demanded that I teach her to knit. So I did.

I broke out the bamboo needles and the Koigu (because it feels so nice in the hand) and got her started on garter stitch.

She was pretty good. A couple of weird yarn looping problems, of course, but she was cruising along, unsupervised, chatting and drinking herbal tea all the while.

I think we have a new member of the coven, sisters!

Lorna's Laces Super Sock - Flame

I came home on a wet and dreary end-of-fall day to find a little package of loveliness waiting for me.



It's one of those moments when I want to drop everything (including two incredibly cute boys) and cast on. Then I remembered that once I had wound the Black Watch version of this I was vaguely disappointed, because I had enjoyed looking at the hank so much. So I'm leaving these ones on display for a while.

But I also really enjoy wearing my Black Watch socks, so I now have an incentive to finish the little boy socks I'm working on now.

And yes, I have found )now that I've discovered them) that I do need to have a sock on the go, for those times when I can snatch a minute or two of knitting-as-therapy (it slows my breathing and untangles my shoulder muscles) but can't do more than a very simple stitch. Cables and sweater-decreases are projects for a comfy armchair and a well-worn episode of Star Trek. Socks are for tossing into a bag, clipping to my belt-loops and working on while I trail around the garden and house after two sometimes-friendly-sometimes-fratricidal little boys.