Little grey rabbit, loose ends

In my freelance life I've been given the enjoyable assignment of knitting up toys for a venerable yarn company. The latest completed project has been a shy little grey rabbit. She refused to smile for this photograph.

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Yesterday was the Ides of March, and as promised, a winner of the Knit Nordic pattern book giveaway was selected. That person is TracyK, and to her I say "congratulations, and please email me via the button on my blogger profile (the "About Me" section of the blog on the right side of the page) with your mailing address so I can send that to the publisher, who will then dispatch the book to you. If I don't hear from you by the 29th, the book will go to the contest runner-up." 

For those of you among the gentle knitters who like receiving free pattern books, a new giveaway will be posted shortly, so be on the lookout. Very few people tend to enter these giveaways, and you therefore have a much greater chance of being awarded a knitting book than you do of, say, winning Powerball.

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Thanks to the awesome designer Kristin Nicholas who mentioned it on her blog, my free pattern for the Earbud Sleeve went viral. That was quite pleasing to me, because I like it when I'm able to improve the lives of so many knitting friends. One of them, Margaret in Grafton, Massachusetts, sent this photo of her completed earbud sleeve, which turned out beautifully. 

I welcome photos of any others people care to send me, and I'll publish them to inspire future generations of knitters who wish to solve the problem of tangled earbuds.

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Purim and spring both arrive this week. At the moment there's very little snow left on the ground in southern Rhode Island, but it's bitterly cold and windy, so difficult to imagine there will be a warming trend. To offset this depressing thought, I baked a lot of Ultimate Hamentaschen today.

They're filled with a delectable mixture of oranges, pecans, dried figs, etc., and I highly recommend the recipe, from the venerable Joan Nathan, which was published in Tablet Magazine last week. Bon appetit!

Earbud sleeve: a free pattern!

Some weeks ago I walked around New York City noticing how everyone was wearing earbuds, or, if their ears weren't plugged up, they had with artful insouciance slung earbuds and attachments around their necks or stuffed them into breast pockets as if they were spaghetti ascots. Instinctively I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to carry this off, because I am woefully maladroit in the tech-toys department, and deliberately uncool.

Perhaps this explains why it's impossible for me to keep my earbuds from tangling, no matter how carefully I roll them before stowing in a cute book-replica box that had once held a bar of soap. I pondered this a while. It then struck me that I could perhaps knit a cord cover, so that I wouldn't have to spend twenty minutes trying to straighten the buds before using them. (Proof of uncoolness: I use earbuds only to talk to H on my cellphone. This is because he claims to be unable to hear me during cellphone chats if I'm holding the phone near my face.)

I cast six stitches onto a #2 dpn, picked up another #2 dpn and began knitting an I-cord with leftover sock yarn. After an inch I decreased, over two rows, to four stitches, then stuffed the base (the plug) of the earbud wire into the knitted tube. The only thing one needs to keep in mind while knitting an I-cord tube around a wire, is always to bring the yarn around the back of the wire each time a new row begins. Work with a small ball of yarn, too, to keep the process manageable.

I continued to knit until the entire wire was swathed in I-cord up to the fork, where the wire divides to each earbud. At this point I consulted the Knitting Goddess, who advised me to increase to eight stitches, using the K1 M1 increase, then put four stitches onto a holder.

I continued knitting first up the left wire, then, picking up stitches at the fork, up the right wire.  I stopped when I got to the microphone, although you might want to stop earlier, and I cut the yarn, leaving a four-inch tail.  I removed the dpn.  The tail was threaded onto a yarn needle, and the needle drawn through the open loops, the yarn cinched, the tail cut, the end woven into the tube.  The same closure was effected for the left wire.  Et voila!

The next step was to figure out what to call this garment. I thought Earbud Sweater would do, but my pal, Pink Mohair, saw it yesterday and said, "It's not a sweater, it's a COSY." Then Neuroknitter saw it today and spontaneously announced, "It's a SLEEVE--an Earbud Sleeve." Amen to that!

So here it is--an Earbud Sleeve that keeps your wires from tangling! In a world where so little can be controlled, how thrilling is that?!

Photo credit:  R. Grahn

The next "IT" accessory?          Photo credit:  R. Grahn