New cars, tattoos and laptops

I've been working a ton of overtime at work lately (one reason for the infrequent posting) and having to work between 3-4 building as well. So, they finally decided to give me a laptop. The laptop came with a big huge ugly case to tote it around in and there was no way I was going to use it. So I started searching Ravelry for a felted laptop sleeve that I could knit and use with a backpack so if I wanted to ride my motorcycle to work I still had a way to transport it and keep some paperwork with it. I found Adam's Super Duper Felted Laptop Tote to be just the ticket. He has great instructions on how to customize a tote to the exact dimensions of your laptop using any yarn and pre/post felting gauge. It worked out pretty good. I even was able to use my swatch as a pocket. The flap turned out a little smaller than I wanted but that's because I ran out of yarn not really because of miscalculations. Then I did my first needle felting to add some decorations and personalizations to my laptop sleeve. Here is my Ravelry project page. I used size 10.5 needles and 2 skeins of cascade 220 and 2 skeins of Crystal Palace kids merino. The yarn was from my very first knitting project, a pair of leg warmers that never got finished. Once I learned to knit and pearl with all that 1x1 ribbing in the round I jumped right into socks and those legwarmers fell by the wayside. When I started looking for yarn for the laptop sleeve I remembered the legwarmers and thought that the cascade 220 would be perfect. I love the purple goodness of it.

I've started on the socks from the December kit from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin Sock Club. It's the Salish Sea Sock pattern from Cat Bordhi that starts with a star toe. According to the measurements I should take a size large so that is what I cast on for but it is turning out way to big. I only have about 2.5 inches done but it was a very fiddly cast on so I'm trying to decide if I can rip back to the increases or if I need to just start over with a smaller size. And if I need to go down one size or two. If you've done this pattern let me know. I think some Ravelry research on this one is in order. So, the knitting has been mostly in time out this weekend although I did work on it a little even though I knew it was turning out too big. I thought about just continuing on and giving them to someone else with bigger feet but this pattern is just so complicated that I think I need the foot to be available for frequent fittings if I expect anyone to be able to wear them.

This past weekend was the first weekend I had off in about a month so I was able to get a little more work done on my butterflies tattoo. I got two new butterflies added. This will eventually go into a full sleeve of butterflies and there will background added as well. You can see how it connects to the previous work I had done on my back.

And on Saturday we went car shopping! Here's my new little baby, a Scion xD! Ain't she purty? And she gets 33 mpg which is good news with the way gas prices are headed! I think I'm in love!