A diversion

Yesterday afternoon, I was diverted from picking up the band stitches on my Tinder.  I finished the collar at Friday knitting group in the morning, but I'd also taken a bag of leftovers from my Granny Stripe Blanket and started A Little Something New.

This:

A little bag.  Do you want to know what it's for?

All right then!

A Kindle!!!  On Tuesday, hubby was doing Stuff on his laptop and then came up to me, gave me his credit card and said "you'll need to take this to Tesco with you after 4pm on Thursday, or Friday morning".  I was a tad perplexed until he said that he'd ordered me a Kindle.  It was a bit of an Oh Gosh moment.  I've had a Sony Reader for a couple of  years and I love it, but Readers and Kindles don't use the same software and not all e-books can be converted to other formats because of Digital Rights Media stuff.  So, I can use my Sony to borrow e-books from the library (I'm a member of Essex, Suffolk and Cambs library services now), but can't do that for a Kindle and, similarly, can't download many books from Amazon to read on my Sony.  Amazon have apparently come to some kind of agreement with libraries in the US, but there doesn't seem to be anything in the pipeline re Amazon and UK libraries (which I'm sure you'll agree is rather irritating - don't Amazon make enough money already?).

I even lined my little bag this morning:

The whole thing took four or five hours to make and I used a couple of buttons that are the same shape from my button tin.  One button is orange and the other is yellow and I used blue yarn to sew them on.

I could have bought a cover for my Kindle, but I didn't want one that opens up like a book as for me that defeats the object of an e-reader somewhat.

Stats:

Yarn is Stylecraft Special DK
Hook size used was 4mm
Fabric was some cotton I had in my stash.
The cover weighs 43g in total, so with all the ends that were sewn in and cut off, it probably used 50g of yarn.

It was very simple to make.  I chained the width I needed and then did UK double crochets (single crochet in US crochetology) along the chain and then back down the other side.  After that, I just went round and round with DCs, two rounds per colour.  Once it was long enough, I did straight rows and skipped a couple of stitches, doing two chains instead, to make the button holes.  Finally, I did one row of DCs around the edge of the buttonhole flap to neaten it up.  For the lining, I cut two rectangles the size I'd measured I needed, seamed around the two long sides and one short side to make a pocket, pressed down the opening for neatness and then slip stitched it in place around the top.  If I was better at sewing, I could have lined it right up to the edge of the flap, but my sewing skills aren't that good.

It's very bright and cheerfull and I doubt very much it's something hubby would have chosen for me!

The irony of all this?  The book I'm currently reading is a physical/'tree' book that I got from the library because it wasn't available in e-form from either of the three library services I belong to (it's "The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers" by Paul Torday, who also wrote "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" which was very good).

Back to picking up button and buttonhole bands for Tinder now and once that's finished, I'm going to concentrate on DD2's Rainbow ZigZag blanket.