Knitted Diary Cover

Keeping Hello Kitty Warm this Winter 

One small pleasure of having a bit more experience with knitting is the ability, in a very small way, to design your own makes when you need to.

I purchased this delightful 2012 Hello Kitty diary from the fantastic Strapya of Japan and I was most concerned about keeping it in pristine condition as it bounced about my handbag. A diary cover was clearly called for.

For this endeavour, I decided to use some pink Debbie Bliss Glen that I bought on impulse when I was last in London and had the opportunity to visit the delightful Tricolette yarn shop.

For once, I used the tension advice (14 stitches to 10 cm) to calculate the number of stitches I would need by measuring the diary and compensating for the fact I planned to use 6mm rather than 6.5mm needles.

Although it's a bit of a faff, I have got quite addicted to knitting in the round using magic loop on circular needles with a long cable because it gives such a seamless result and saves tons of sewing up. I read an interview with Debbie Bliss recently saying she advised learning to love sewing up as you had to do such a lot of it, but I'm still in denial...

So, I cast on 32 stitches and did several rounds of 1x1 rib to ensure a flat top for my diary cover. I find rib surprisingly difficult as I find it's easy to forget whether you're supposed to be knitting or purling.

Anyway, once that challenge was out of the way, it was just round and round until the piece was long enough. Another advantage with doing it as a circular knit was that it was very easy to keep trying the diary inside the work in progress to ensure the size was perfect.

I used three needle bind off to make the bottom of the diary cover, so no sewing at all and just a measly two ends to weave in. Woo hoo!

To embellish my diary cover, I sewed on a  pretty wooden button from my stash and then glued on a felt flower embellishment from my favour purveyor of felty things, paper and string.

So, a cute and cosy cover for Hello Kitty, custom made to fit with no dodgy making up. I feel quite proud...

Melx