Sundries: Skirts and Camera Cases

Okay, just one skirt. My Winter Wonderland Isobel:

It is at about 13" right now and it's super-lovely. I can't wait to wear it. But I do have at LEAST six and a half more inches but probably more. I have a feeling when I try it on at 19.5" it's going to be slightly too short. Though I want it to be short-ish, above the knee, I also want to be comfortable-- I hate constantly worrying about tushy/upper thigh flashing. This skirt naturally rests at the waist, so it'll need more length. I did about an inch yesterday watching Glee (that show sucks-- I don't understand the hype) and hanging out with my cousins, who were great. Love it!

Small side project-- always great for morale when you're working on something big. I got a sweet new camera and my old camera case is a bit too small so I decided to knit one. My first try was this:

Yuck, right? It was too small. I always tend to knit with negative ease because things tend to come out too big, so even though my gauge suggested I knit 6 repeats of the honeycomb stitch-- 36 stitches-- I omitted one repeat and only did 30 stitches. And it came out way too small, with the stitches pulling apart unattractively. I sewed on velcro strips (very poorly, obviously) and then I did one cool thing-- a fingering weight lining. Since my camera is new and has a touch screen, I want it to be sufficiently padded and protected, so I picked up stitches around the wrong-side opening with a sock yarn and two size 1 circulars, and I knit a little sock for the case. I didn't check gauge or anything-- why would I?-- so I had no idea how many stitches to pick up. Therefore I picked up too many and decreased a lot, too much actually, until it got too narrow at the bottom. Basically it was a fail all around.

So I decided to try again. I flipped around my stitch pattern books for a while and found a cool wicker stitch pattern that I liked, and decided to use up the rest of my Clementine Shine Worsted (see headband) because it's soft and has a nice weight. Here it is:

I like it much better. I worked a 17-stitch repeat-- purl 4, wicker stitch 13, purl 4-- for 11". I probably should have made it a little longer so the flap would be longer, but I didn't. Tonight I sewed the seams and sewed on velcro. The first kind-- see the picture above-- was a fancy kind for holding cables that my dad gave me, but it wasn't strong enough so I cut it off and sewed on the regular velcro. The flap is still a little short but it is secure.

Here's a close-up of the cool wicker stitch:

The pattern calls for a cross over-- using a dpn for like little one-stitch "cables"-- but I decided to do a right twist instead so I could work faster. It's so cool-- I like the stitch a lot and it's really simple.

It goes like this-- with multiple of 13 sts:

Right twist-- skip one stitch, k second stitch tbl, knit first stitch and remove both stitches from left needle.
Left twist-- skip one stitch, p second stitch, p first stitch, remove both stitches from left needle.

PATTERN
RS: K1, work right twist four times.
WS: P1, work left twist four times.

SO EASY! I worked it with a 4-st purl border on either side.

I'm also going to "line" it with another layer of fingering weight knitting. But probably not tonight. My eyes hurt.