I find that my crochet projects are getting nerdier and nerdier... and I'm okay with that.
So, I found this pattern here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cell-phone-cozy-eleven
It's for a cell phone case based on the outfit of the Eleventh Doctor, who (see what I did there?) let's just face it, is freakin' awesome. My darling little sister saw this case and immediately wanted it, but for her laptop instead. So I went about altering the pattern into my first ever semi-original design.
Here's a picture of the cell phone case:
Okay, so color differences. We used brown instead of dark grey for the pants because... that was an honest mistake. We just assumed his pants were brown. But it looked okay anyway. We also didn't do beige in the back to mimic his jacket. That was Becki's decision. Of course, she didn't decide this until I was halfway through the pants, when I'd already started to run the yarn through the sc in anticipation of switching colors. To keep the thickness of the fabric consistent, I continued running the yarn through, even though I didn't need to anymore. This actually made the fabric sturdier and thicker, so it all worked out in the end.
The other major difference was the suspenders. In the original pattern, you just embroidered them on. Obviously, that wasn't going to cut it with the bigger pattern, so I had to make them separately and then attach them. We talked originally about attaching them only to the back and letting the front of them hang loose. We would have attached buttons to the front that would button them down. This would let the suspenders come up and over the laptop to hold it in place. However, once I actually made the suspenders, the stitches were stretchy enough that they could be slid over even if I sewed them securely on both sides, so that's what I did. It's kind of hard to explain, so see the pictures below. It actually worked out far better than the button idea.
Since I didn't need to embroider anything, I worked this pattern as a spiral, instead of finishing off each round. This let me avoid a seam. If I had made the jacket, that would never work because the stitches wouldn't have been straight. The laptop case was about 87 stitches around, though this would differ from laptop to laptop. The suspenders were 80 rows of three sc. I think I just doubled the bowtie in size. I finished the top of the case with reverse sc, to make it a little thicker so it wouldn't catch on anything sticking out of the laptop. I love reverse sc. It finishes things off so nicely.
Becki loves this thing. She uses it constantly. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Visit ralvelry for specifics on my color choices!
