Well, here’s my new laptop case in all its glory, and I must say that it fits perfectly! The handles are very sturdy and the laptop is nice and snug and feels well padded and protected.
Now I get to finish the accoutrements, which include plans to knit a pocket or two for the back, a shoulder strap, and some sweet needle felting on the front. I’m excited to finish the rest of the bag, but I am very excited to have it this far, and have it come out so perfectly! I might even put my pattern in as a submission to the next issue of knitty!
Ok, so there are so many things to talk about, and I haven’t posted in a day or two, so I’m going to break down this post into subcategories, so I can cover everything. ;) You know my engineer tendencies make you all hot and bothered.
Also, this post will probably be crazy long, so I’m going to break it up into a new page. Click onward to read more… Continue reading ‘Felting the Midnight Oil’
Wow. It’s been a very intense and emotional week. I haven’t posted in a while because of stuff that’s been going on with my family, because we’re going through a very difficult time right now. After 17 years, my Dad resigned from his job at Calvary of Albuquerque, and I resigned my position as well. I don’t want to feed rumors going around or anything, so I can’t say much, just that we felt that God was calling us to move on. This has been a very difficult time for us, because Calvary is our family’s second home. I’ve worked there for many years, my brother works there, and my Dad has faithfully worked there for so long, it’s just been very hard. But sometimes God calls you to sacrifice something that’s extremely dear to you, and you have to take a step of faith and trust that He is in control. So while we are all very sad to be leaving, we are excited to new developments and where God is taking us next.
So that’s what’s been going on in my life this last week in a nutshell. As far as knitting goes, I’m making good progress on my laptop bag. I knitted and felted a swatch with my yarn (Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb) and figured out exactly how big I need to make the unfelted piece. I’m about 50% done with the 18″ x 42″ rectangle for the bag now, and moving along pretty quickly. I’ve come up with a few cool ideas too, I think I want to make a pocket on the outside to put my power adapter in, and I’d also like to make a detachable shoulder strap in addition to the built-in handle. If anyone has any ideas on how to do those things, leave a comment! I’m planning to make just a small rectangle and then sew it onto the bag, probably with some colored thread, to make the pocket. Also I thought it’d be cool to do a long strap that had i-cord edges that maybe could use buttons could to detach or something. Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I’m excited to see this bag come to completion!
I’ll definitely take some pictures soon and put them up, but until then, Auf Wiedersehen!
P.S. I’m not really sure what’s up with the German, but it popped into my head and I thought I should put it there :)
So, I think I’m getting a lot closer to finalizing the pattern I’m going to go with for my next pattern, which I will now reveal will be a Laptop Sleeve, for my 14″ iBook. I picked up a copy of Felted Knits by Beverly Galeskas from Village Wools today, since Scout showed it to me the other day and it seemed like a great book for felting advice and techniques. The only thing about this pattern that I’m a little bit unsure of is the felting. The thing is, that for the bag to fit my laptop right, the dimensions need to be pretty spot on, because I want a pretty tight fit. But I’m an engineer, and I should be able to figure this out :-P The plan is for the bag to hold my computer horizontally, and have a handle on the top. And then when it’s done, I’m going to needle felt on an old school Apple computer logo, in full 80s glory! So I’m pretty excited because I think this sleeve will be pretty awesome when it’s done, and it will be completely unique!
Speaking of engineering, man I had some heinous homework to do tonight. I was trying to figure out the transmitted wave amplitude of an incident electric wave through 2 successive mediums with non zero conductivities, and man is that difficult! So if anyone knows how to derive a recursive solution for field impedance and transmission coefficients for electromagnetic waves, drop me a comment ;)
Anyway, it’s time to go to bed now, and stop bemoaning the fact that Valentine’s Day sucks, because everyone I know went out on nice romantic dates while I sat at home being single all night. Seriously, holidays like this are just so mean, I swear it’s a conspiracy to suppress single people for population control or something.
