Finally Finished!

So I finally finished that present I had been working on. Well, I finished it on Saturday and got it in the mail on Monday. She'll have a lovely surprise waiting for her when she gets back from vacation. So the request was for a needle and hook holder. I had just happened to see a pattern in a book that gave you instructions for knitting AND crocheting an item. I was extra excited when I saw the book, but a flip through left me wanting more. I was not at all thrilled with the patterns. It wouldn't be worth my $20. Then days later my dear friend asked for the holders. I scoured the web but found only one or two patterns where you actually knitted or crocheted them, the rest were for sewing. So I went back for the book that had the patterns to knit and crochet the holders.

I decided to crochet the needle case and knit the crochet case. Partially for the irony, but mostly b/c crochet usually works up faster and obviously the needle case is bigger. Holy cow! This was not a quick and easy pattern! Not that it was extra difficult, it was just more... annoying. After establishing the foundation row the row was stitch one chain one across. Fine. But then the next row had you stitching into the chain not the stitch. And so forth row after row stitching into the chained one. Not complicated, just not nearly as easy and mindless as stitching into the stitch. Then I was having trouble following the steps of the 2 rows I was repeating for 60 odd rows. Part of it was that I went off the book for awhile before totally grasping the rhythm of the pattern. I had even taken it apart almost half way through and had the same issue when I reworked it. By the time I got myself back on track I didn't have the time (or desire) to re-re-work. So it goes in in the middle then back out. What? The case has an hour glass shape, what's wrong w/ that?! I had to change the placement of the bands because of this, put them further apart.I was hoping the knitting would go smoother. Again the pattern was a bit more intricate than I was expecting (just by looking at the picture). Not complicated, but not as mindless as I was hoping. Things were going well until it came to knitting the bands. The pattern was written a little poorly to say the least. For the body it got you started off then had you refer to the pattern for the bigger case. Okay, done and done. Do this pattern of knitting and purling and repeat from * til end. Same for the borders. Easy enough. For the band: Cast on this many then repeat pattern from the bigger case. Purl 4, Cast on 5, purl 4 repeat 13 times.

I first thought I should cast on 5, move them to my right needle, then purl 4, but that wasn't going to get me 13 times across. She must mean cast on 5 then purl 4 from there...? Strange but okay, lets see where that gets me. I was having a hard time conceptualizing what it would look like, but whatever, I'll go with it. I went on following the pattern like that for quite some time and let me tell you, not so easy! I even read the instructions to my sister to make sure I wasn't missing something. I was perplexed. I'm usually really good at figuring out patterns, but this was over my head. I took it all out and decided to start again. That was when I realized that of course I wouldn't be able to repeat 13 more times because I was starting with half the stitches!!! But it didn't even occur to me to take that into consideration because the other 'repeat pattern from bigger case' instructions just had you going to the end of the row, not repeating a set amount of times. I wasn't even thinking in terms of working with less stitches and the author didn't kindly remind me. Nor did she say 'Cast on 5, move stitches to right needle, purl 4.' I feel like these would be important clarifications to make. I have definitely worked on patterns were you cast on and then immediately knit or purl into those new stitches...

At least now I'll be able to whip through these the next time I need to make them. Got the annoying learning curve out of the way. I'm still annoyed that the pattern was written poorly for the knitting band. It was a slight blow to the ego because I shoulda been able to figure it out sooner than I did, even though I was trying. Poorly written though, poorly written. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Now I'm on to crocheting food!! Hooray!