knitting maps, for friends

outer banks

one of the blogs i follow, Maps For Friends, is written by a good friend who, obviously, loves all things map related.  so it was no surprise when he requested some knitting that was also map related. after much contemplation, i settled on making a pot holder. in my head i was thinking this would be another "quick knit" to break up the monotony of the scarf i've been working on. i need to stop thinking i can "quick knit" anything.
my first issue was creating a pattern. a quick google search brought up tons of images of world maps, but as you might know, world maps are not perfect squares. so i found a picture that i thought would work, threw it into Knit Pro 2.0 and voila.

row of condemned, beachfront houses

then i had another problem. if i was just going to throw this together as a favor, i wasn't really going to take the time to drive all the way to the knitting store for new yarn, so i had planned on just using some of my stash. but when making a pot holder, can one use acrylic yarn or will it melt?? i googled some more, and couldn't find a consensus, so i opted to not try it. luckily i had some cotton yarn left over from my pathetic attempt at making a shirt.
so onwards and upwards. i decided how many stitches i wanted to cast on (45) and went over to ravelry to look for some hints. boy was i surprised. apparently there is this thing called double knitting that is used to make potholders which makes the project thicker and knits the design on both sides. well. after watching plenty of YouTube videos, i decided that was not for me. the plan was to knit one square with the pattern, and then knit a plain square and sew the two together.

5 balls of yarn at work!

the adventure began and it was taking forever. so when i was asked to head to the outer banks for a  weekend, i couldn't resist. finishing a travel related project on a weekend trip sounded perfect! well, that didn't happen. the weather was beautiful and i spent most of my time either walking on the beach or hanging out with the locals in a bar.
so it was back to dc to finish. once i actually settled in to work on it, the work didn't actually take that long. and once the front was done, the back only took a couple of hours, although i assume it takes much less time for a more polished knitter.  so here is the final product....

all done!

the colors seem a bit off, probably because it was taken at 1am when i finally finished it. to sew it together, i put the right sides together and started in one corner. once three sides were sewn, i flipped it right side out and stitched the two sides together in the middle, about every inch or so. my only concern when i decided to make 2 separate pieces was that they would be too floppy once put together. hopefully my stitches will stay together and keep the pot holder sturdier.

i tried to take a better picture with natural light to give a better sense of the true colors, but it was too bright for my camera w the shades open. it kind of shows a difference, although not as much as i would have hoped.
so all in all, pot holder success. if i make anymore of these, i will probably use a bigger needle and bulkier yarn, just to make the process go a bit faster. i imagine most knitters could whip this baby out in less than an hour. oh well. at least my work isn't pulling as much when i use two colors!!!

cuddle buddies

now time for an update. you may remember the post by meg about the Nikolas pillow i made and how he was scared to go near it. well, the tides have turned. Nikolas and pillow Nikolas have now bonded. and my work here is complete.