Just Something I Whipped Up (and finished just in time for Monday!)

Okay.  I started this last weekend, and worked on it all week on the premise that I was relieving stress--knitting relieves stress, right?  Well, this baby was WAY stressful!  I've never felted before, and I have to admit it looked much more decoratively creative in my head than it actually turned out to be.  I think what threw me off was the tomatoey color of the wool.  ANYWAY, it's done.  I had to stay up past my Sunday bedtime to finish it, but it's done.

"What is it?", you might be asking.  It is a felted DPN needle case.

(This last picture is a more accurate representation of the color.) A few decorative, non-purposeful buttons, a little ribbon, a blanket stitch with embroidery thread, and a very interesting felting experience with a front-loading washing machine, and voila!  A needle case is born.

I improvised this based on two different free patterns that I found and Patons and I can't remember where else--Ravelry maybe--, neither of which really gave me what I wanted.  I hate it when my DPNs fall out of the straight needle roll-up case every time I unroll it to get some needles.  I knit this up on size 8s.  The fabric is a little thick, and I probably should have used a fingering weight (that's going to be the next felting experiment) instead of about 220 yards of DK weight, but it serves the purpose.  Who's going to ever see it besides me and Buddy the Knitting Dog, anyway?  And, well, besides you.