Toys Need Protection, Too

I think I've mentioned that I've acquired a small camera, didn't I? This one fits into my purse and I can carry it with me easily, without having a camera case slung around my neck. There is, however, one disadvantage to having a camera in your purse: it can very easily get scratched and/or damaged. To that end, I decided that my new camera needed some protection. And, being a knitter, I knew just how to do that.

On Sunday, I found a ball of sock yarn, a long-enough circular needle and started experimenting. I started out with a garter stitch rectangle. Thinking that 64 stitches around might be good enough, I cast on 28 stitches; my reasoning was that there would be 4 stitches picked up on the narrow ends, leaving 56 stitches. Half of 56 is 28. I did 8 rows of garter stitch, giving me the 4 edge ridge stitches for picking up. Then I worked straight up in stocking stitch (knit every row). I did about an inch, then picked up the camera to see how it fit. It didn't. The pouch was far to big for the camera.

The good thing, though, was that I had a swatch now. I was getting 9 stitches per inch and could work out from there how many stitches I should have. In the end, I had 56 stitches in the round, having cast on 22 for each side and 6 stitches on each of the narrow ends. Once all the stitches were picked up, I worked straight up until the pouch was the same size as the camera. I finished it up with about an inch of 2x2 rib (knit 2, purl 2), then cast off.

As you can see, the ribbing pulls in nicely, holding the camera in place without cords or buttons. The yarn is OnLine Supersocke 100 in the Hiking series and I used 2.25 mm needles. Timewise, I had this made in one afternoon/evening. It's a quick knit, looks kind of funky and protects my camera which, incidentally is a Lumix 12 megapixel camera, a very nice little toy.