Bagged

After knitting dice bags for Hubby and a couple friends, I finally have a reason to make a dice bag for myself. This weekend I went to my first DnD game. Of course, I couldn't go unaccessorized! I couldn't  decide what I wanted so Hubby started one for me with the self-striping yarn that was left over from Syndey's leg warmers. Because of my impatience, I had to take over and I finished it.



I love my sparkly dice! 


Inspired by Hubby's stripes and Being Elmo, I knew exactly what I wanted for my polyhedrals.



Look familiar? You get 100 cool points from me if you immediately thought of this guy:

From Sesame Street

I did much better with my jogless stripe on this bag than my birds. I think that the stripes on the birds were just a bit too thin for the jogless technique that I was trying to use. It worked much better on the wider blue and red stripes here. These little bags are a great way to practice new techniques. I love them. I'll have to come up with an excuse to make some more. Now I just need to resist the urge to buy some primary colored dice that match my bag. Maybe I need one that looks like Bert. Vertical stripes would be a good thing to learn.

Queued: BYOB

From Knitty

Who doesn't need more bags? When I lived in Arkansas reusable bags weren't too hard because I could just keep them in my trunk. Since moving to NYC they have become a bit harder to remember to bring along but also vital. I don't need to tell you all the green and eco-friendly reasons why reusable bags are great. the reason I love think they are vital is because of pain of plastic. I walk home from the grocery store, but even those of you who just walk to the parking lot know how quickly that plastic bag starts cutting into your hand. It becomes miserable really fast. Hand knit or not, reusable bags are so much nicer to carry.

Knitty, in its infinite awesomeness, has this great BYOB pattern by Moira Ravenscroft. I think this bag is cute. I can see it being great for both shopping and the beach. A couple times I've even considered making it as a gift for the loved ones in my life who don't appreciate actually wearing my knit goods.

FO: Munchkin Bag

PAX East is just around the corner, and now I can excitedly say that I am completely prepared. It is also official that I am over dice bags for a while. This last bag is for a friend who we are tagging along to PAX with. He is my game buddy, and I owe him for so many late nights of endless laughing. One of the most hilarious things he has brought to my life is the game Munchkin from Steve Jackson Games. Some day I'll have to write a review for it, but for now, I will just say that it is full of adventure, cheating, jokes, and witty references to all of geekdom (and I am very excited about buying the new Munchkin Zombies next week before they hit shelves.)

The quirky art of the Munchkin games is done by John Kovalic. He has created this mascot for the game.

From John Kovalic

And this fella's silhouette is now adorning the game die and other accessories. Like this:

From Steve Jackson Games

Of course I decided that this would be the perfect image for the bag my friend needs for his Munchkin accessories. I charted:

From Drop Box

And I used the same front flap procedure as my last bag to make this:

The image is a little squatter than I was shooting for.  His neck is a bit too short and his nose a bit too Fraggle, but I think that anyone who knows what they are looking at, will see it just fine. With that, I am done with dice bags for the near future. If anyone is looking to play games that inspire giggle fits, I am up to the task though!

An FO and a Bonus

The Blood Angel Bag is finally finished. It is quite a bit bigger than my previous dice bags, but I think it is exactly what my friend requested. Hopefully he'll be happy with it.


Since I have already explained the process I went through for this, I have a bonus treat for you. You guys seemed to like the Kuroshio Sea aquarium, so now I want to show you something from the other end of the spectrum. Enjoy!



Via LikeCool

No Disrespect to the Blood Angels

While watching a movie with Hubby last night and catching up with TED talks this morning, I've finished the rest of the bag and bound off.  I wanted to take a pre-seaming picture to make it even more clear how I'm attaching the image panel to the rest of the bag.

At this moment, I don't think this looks as bag like as it should.  In fact, in it's current pre-seamed state, I can only see a diaper. Wouldn't it be the cutest little Warhammer diaper ever?

Blood Angel Bag Taking Shape

The charting has paid off, and now this back can officially be called a Blood Angel bag. Actually, I am not certain it can be called a bag yet. Since I am just putting one insignia on the bag, I decided to use a trick that I learned from making Cara Key's Alfonso the Monkey pattern. I've knit up a front panel with the emblem on it using intarsia to put on the emblem. Now that that section is done, it will wait until I knit up the rest of the bag. Then I'll rejoin the pieces and work on in the round.  Once the full bag is done, I will mattress stitch the open sides together. I hope this will make two indiscernible seams along the sides of the emblem.

Here is a better look at the rest of the the work I have to do.
I don't think it will take long at all, but I am realizing how much extra purling this method includes.

With Love from Cthulhu

From what I understand Cthulhu prefers cultists to valentines, but this year, he is helping me share a little love with my hubby. I mentioned that I was working on a dice bag for his new game, and with out any stress I was able to complete it in time for our February fawning over each other.

I am still not completely happy with my color work. This time, I used a yarn stranding guide  for the two color section.  It was helpful in that I didn't have to drop and pick up the yarn each time I changed colors. This was great on the boarder rows that switched colors every other stitch, but I still had difficulties with the runners. The gauge of that band is still noticeably tighter and their are a couple places that pucker a bit from turning the corner on DPNs.

The color work section also went really slowly. Part of that is because I am still not comfortable with the technique. I will definitely need to do some more smaller pieces before I take on anything major. Another issue was my yarn. Hubby's game had a glow in the dark die so he wanted a glow in the dark bag. he bought me some glow in the dark yarn, and agreed that it sounded fantastic. Let this be your warning. If you want to knit anything glow in the dark, you better be committed. This 100% nylon yarn is scratchy, splicy, and miserable to work with.  There was no joy in it running through scraping across my fingers. There is no twist in the yarn, so the tiny little threads that make up its weight were not cohesive and I was constantly knitting right through the middle of a strand.  Just take a look at that i-cord draw string. Tiny little nylon loops are poking out everywhere making the whole thing a little itchy and sad.

With all of that said, I must also tell you. It does an awesome job at glowing in the dark. Despite hating working with it, I already have plans for the rest of my ball. I would not be surprised if I end up buying more.  I locked myself in our windowless bathroom to try and get you a picture of the awesome glowing.  Unfortunately, my camera does not have manual settings that allow me to leave the shutter open long enough to really capture the luminescent green. This is the best I got before I realized that trying to take and enhance photos of darkness is how I'm going to accidentally discover my toilet is haunted.



I cannot promise that we don't have any ghosts, but if you would like to come over to play, Hubby is ready to show off his new game.