Mac Lovin'

My wonderful sister and brother-in-law (BIL) gifted me a couple months ago with an iPad. I've preferred Macs to PCs for a while and fell in love with the iPad pretty early on. It makes me feel like I'm on "Star Trek" and my childhood crush on Wesley Crusher keeps rushing back. I suspect that I'm not betraying my extreme nerdiness by saying this...or by posting my new iPad case.

I use my iPad almost everyday. When I don't need to be running stats or be typing a lot I take my iPad instead of my computer. So I started to worry about the iPad getting scratched up even though mine has that cool new magnetic cover. I thought about buying a carrying case, but decided I could make my own, especially with all the yarn I had left over from felting. Kill two birds with one stone I thought.

Yeah...I really need to learn to plan ahead on these new projects.

It all started off so well. I measured out how large the iPad was, traced and gridded out the apple logo*, made a gauge (but didn't felt it - mistake 1 of many) and started knitting. I had to return to the pattern for the logo though cuz it turned out too squat the first time. The second time worked like a charm and after 4 hours of knitting in the car and at BIL's birthday get together I had this:

I even left space so that I could sew it up into a box instead of just an envelope! I was so proud of myself. (Pride - mistake 2)

I threw it in the washer and got this:

I naively thought it was still perfect. That is until I laid my iPad on top of it. It was just a bit too narrow and way to tall.

I blame what happened next on my sleep deprivation from trying to find new housing and my upcoming move to the Bay Area. Okay, maybe I was just super excited to have an iPad case even though the felted cover was STILL WET.

I was planning on putting a liner in anyways, so I made my liner with extra quilting material I had at home. Then without taking into account how much extra fabric the liner added, I trimmed the felted cover (huge mistake 3).

Instead of waiting to get a zipper and tacking everything together to double check the sizing I rushed into sewing the liner in (mistake 4).

Looks nice right? Except that it's just a tad too small for my iPad. Putting in a zipper will help stretch the the cover over the iPad, but if I don't want it to look too "thrown-together" I need to remove the liner and stitch it back in. There is a reason I'm a knitter and not a seamstress. Maybe I'll just throw this into a box and deal with it after I move, or maybe I'll just try again from scratch after I move. But then again I do still need a case...so I guess I'll just use it as is for now.

*Note: I was worried a bit about trademark issues so I'm not posting my pattern. Suffice it to say it's super easy. Just trace your mac logo from your mac product on graph paper, add a symbol to indicate color change and expand it vertically every few rows. Then try knitting it out.