Pouch

I finished the black pouch! Now I just have to turn it in.

I'm in a hurry, so I'm just going to post the photos. I think they're pretty well self-explanatory. It's a small little bag, but it's just big enough for a small project or some notions, and it's easy to carry. I like it.

This is my 5th project for the House Cup for February, plus 50% on my OWL, and my 3rd for Nerd Wars. I turned in the first two hats (Viking Hat and Mom's Hermione Hearts Ron hat) for the OWL; the lightbulb and conversation heart for the House Cup; and Cookie the murloc, the Icarus cowl and now this for both challenges. Go me! It was a busy month!

Short post

It's late, and I'm tired, so I'll make this short. I finished the Icarus cowl. I'm not satisfied with it (partly due to unforeseen circumstances with the pattern and partly due to plain old mistakes on my part) and will either redo it or start over and work another version later. But, this will do for the time being; it's still pretty and will still keep my neck warm.

You can't really tell in either of those photos, but the bottom part uses the feathery pattern from Icarus.

Last night I cast on my final project of the month, which I will (hopefully) finish tomorrow. It's just a small black wool pouch with six internal photos. I'll post photos when it's done.

I've been a busy little bee

First and foremost, I finished Mom's hat!

I'm tired, so I won't go into details that I've already explained on Ravelry, but I cut out one repeat. It still turned out huge and had to be shrunk a bit. I hope it fits now. There's no chance of it being too small, but it may require some additional shrinkage.

By the way, I LOVE this yarn (Road to China Light). It feels amazing and has great drape, and I love this color. You can't really see in the pictures, but it has a lot of depth to it ... lots of flecks of deeper greens and blues that you can't quite tell are really there unless you stare very closely. It's kind of like the ocean, except of course not quite the right color. The color's almost alive. And yeah, the yarn's just great ... I mean, look at that stitch definition! I want more.

Then today at work, I got bored and decided on a quick project ... a knit conversation heart.

It was a very quick knit. I happened to have the lavender yarn in my car (I used it for demonstrations in my knitting class) and used Julie Edwards' Little Stuffed Heart pattern to knit up a quick little heart. It took about 30 minutes to knit the heart, another 10 to sew it up and stuff it, 10 minutes to find suitable pink yarn for the writing and 10 minutes to embroider a sloppy slogan on it. It ended up as another cat toy. And a project for History of Magic in the House Cup! I didn't intend to turn in a History of Magic project this month, but it was so quick ...

Now, I really must finish the bookmark for my Hufflelove Exchange partner so I can get that in the mail. Then I still need to do the murloc, the black pouch and of course, the Icarus cowl, all by the end of the month. Hah!

Mom's Hat

I finished my first project for this month's House Cup assignments. No big deal, just an amigurumi lightbulb. Very quick. I gave it to the cat to use as a toy.

I wasn't entirely happy with the shaping ... the socket turned out a little long, and the bulb part was a little too short and flat on the top. But I figure since it's just a cat toy, who cares?

I also gave my brother his Viking Hat. The beard is a little narrow. When I get time, I'll knit a wider one to replace it with. But he loved it, and aside from the beard being a little too narrow for his face, it fits pretty well. And the beard does hug his face nicely, it just doesn't cover as much of his cheeks and jaw as I think it should.

So, with those two projects done, I've been working on a few others. I'm trying to design and knit a cowl using the feathery edging from Icarus. I've got the design finished and yarn purchased (I'm using Alpaca with a Twist Fino in a light blue ... it feels completely amazing!) but I haven't had a chance to wind my yarn into a ball yet. I've also been trying to find/come up with a good design for a lacy bookmark for a swap we're doing in Hufflepuff in the House Cup. I tried one out already, but I wasn't satisfied with it, so it's back to the drawing board. I'm using Kidsilk Haze for this, in black. It's the first time I've worked with Kidsilk Haze. It's softer than I expected ... I think I like it. Which is good, because I'm probably going to have around 200 yds. left over, even if I don't frog the bookmark I already knit from it. And I am open to good bookmark suggestions, by the way. I'm looking for something rectangular, maybe with a scallop or v at the end, and lacy and pretty and delicate.

And I've been working on Mom's Hermione Hearts Ron hat. I've finished 3 repeats of the cable and lace pattern. The pattern calls for 4 repeats of the pattern before you start decreasing, but I need to measure the hat first. It's looking a little long. I may need to start decreasing before that point. Mom's head is only slightly larger than mine, so if it fits me well, it should fit her too. I tried it on earlier, and it's just a little loose on me (good, since she needs an extra half inch to an inch, plus hats that are too snug look weird on her). It also reaches from the middle of my ears to where my skull starts to flatten at the crown, so I'm thinking I'll be cutting out that 4th repeat. But we'll see.

No pictures of that yet because my camera batteries are dead and I'm not sure where the replacements have disappeared to. I'll have to find some before the end of the month so I can post a photo showing I've completed both of the first two hats for my OWL.

And then I have to finish the rest of my class assignments, both for the House Cup and for the Nerd Wars challenge, which works basically the same way. Fortunately, I can use the same projects for both challenges, as long as I can find a category to fit each of them into. The Icarus Cowl will count for both. I'm also planning a knit murloc for Luke and a black wool pouch to count for both challenges. The lightbulb only counts for the House Cup, sadly.

Oh! And speaking of the House Cup ... point totals are in for the first month. I earned 66 points! I turned in 3 class assignments for 15 points each and one "detention" project (a project that started the month as a WIP) for 10 points. And I got bonus points on each of my class assignments ... 1 bonus point for Earpaper, 7 bonus points for Saroyan and 3 bonus points for my Lord of the Earrings. My new goal is to top those amounts this month, but that may not happen ... it is a short month, after all, and I have spent a significant portion of the first week working on my OWL and swap projects. But we'll see.