On Experimentation, Long Distances and Cozy Covers

I'm a huge experimenter with my knitting. I could say that I like to look up patterns, and then tweak them to make them my own. But it's probably more truthful to say that I sometimes goof a pattern, so I'm likely to switch it up -- in the immortal words of Bob Ross, we don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents. So sometimes I end up with a weird little thing I wasn't intending to make, but I've learned something about my craft.

Usually, my happy little accidents or experiments find their way to my little sister. She's the best baby sister a girl with too much knitting ambition could hope for. She's always accepted my gifts with grace and sweetness. We're 12 years and 600 miles apart, since I've been living in Oregon for the past 5 years. It's tough for us to stay close, but especially now when she's going to be graduating high school and going off to (gasp!) COLLEGE, it's top priority for me to be the big sissy she needs. Oh, I'm making myself tear up!

ANYWAY, for the past couple of years, I've been making her special projects with themes on her favorite movies and TV shows. She's a HUGE Harry Potter Fan (it's something we have in common); last year for her birthday, I made her a sweater in the style of the ones Molly Weasley makes for Harry and Ron in Sorcerer's Stone.

"There were never such devoted sisters!"
Haines sisters, eat your hearts out

Keep in mind this was my very first sweater ever (experimentation!) so it was a little ahem LARGE for my petite sister. But I'm rather proud of the duplicate knitted M.

Ron and Harry from Sorcerer's Stone, for comparisson

By the way, this is the pattern I used to "inspire" my version of the sweater.

This year, I decided to take my experimentation to a whole new level, and spent the better part of a month an a half working on knitted book covers for her!

The story is, I got her a boxed set of all the Harry Potter books, which she somehow doesn't yet have. But, when I got the set, and pulled all the books out to look at them, I had a hell of a time trying to get them back into the box. In fact, it looked like I wouldn't be able to get them back into the box without damaging the covers, which super annoyed me. So I did the natural thing, I resolved to knit my way out of this problem.

For this project, I didn't use a pattern at all, and just sort of made it up as I went along. The first versions of the first couple of covers turned out pretty wonky, but by the time I got to the 4th book, I had a good idea of how to make them best fit the books.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Each book has a different cabled, twisted, or knit-purled pattern on the front and back covers. That was actually a fun way to learn different stitches, kind of like a sampler project.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

It took me about a month and a half to complete all 7 books, but with all that experimenting, toward the end it only took me a couple of days to start and finish the 7th book. I'm thinking sometime soon I'll work up a pattern that is adjustable to different book sizes, and maybe make covers for commission in my Etsy store. But for now, I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor and getting ready to send a big box of books with sweaters on them to my sister!

Here's a peek at my work station and books on my desk

Bonus picture: here's my fat cat trying to fit into a small box, which I think is hilarious:

Happy Holidays!

<3 Jenicorn