Finish for the Weekend

Hello dear friends and readers!

Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, where we share finished projects this week in an effort to clear up those UFO's! Please see below for instructions on how to join in.

I hope you've had a good week. I haven't. I've had a bad tooth abscess which has knocked me for six all week. I've been to the emergency dentist twice, been on two loads of antibiotics, and even ended up at A&E for an IV dose of antibiotics. As I type its still extremely painful, and still got a bit of a lump on my cheek, it was about golf-ball sized, though I think its finally starting to go down a bit. So I've not done much except pop pills and sleep (or try to) all week.

But I was determined to have a finish to show you today. Its not a very exciting one I'm afraid. I made a cover for our remote-control box. How exciting.
We bought new sofas a couple of years ago, they are electronic recliners, and as such each side moves independently of the other. This means if anything (e.g. a remote control) falls down the gap between the sofa cushions, then it's lost under a heap of metalwork and is bloomin' awkward to get back. We needed a box hat was large and shallow because one of our remotes is super-sensitive and if you so much as breath on it, it starts up the playstation which then hums annoyingly. So we can't just chuck them all in a box because inevitably something sets it off. I found a shoebox lid to be just the right size.

And I decided to crochet a cover for it, as you do. So I started off in a nice soft grey to match the sofa. Well that was two years ago. Seriously, I have no staying power at all, its not a very big project and yet I still got distracted enough to put it to one side and work on something else. So we've had this slightly tatty shoe box lid lying around the front room for all that time holding the remotes.

Today I took one look at the shoebox lid and decided to finish off the cover for it. I wanted a nice inner to the box, so I cut a piece of cardboard (just from a cereal box), glued a piece of felt to one side of it to give it a bit of softness, then covered in this grey and turquoise fabric. I was going to get the sewing machine out but actually I decided that simply turning the edges under and hot-gluing them in place would be easier and probably neater.

The crochet starts off with a solid granny rectangle. I worked out the starting chain length by using the difference between the length and the width of the shoebox lid. I think. Well, it was 2 years ago. I can't remember what yarn the grey was, Stylecraft Special DK, in silver possibly. Anyway, I increased on every round until the rectangle was big enough to fit the base (ish), then stopped increasing to make the sides grow straight up instead of out flat.



After a bit I changed to a sort of duck-egg-green-blue, and as I started that bit just last week I can tell you that it is Paintbox DK in Washed Teal. I love these Paintbox yarns, so soft to work with.

And then it was a question of keeping going until it was big enough. I made the sides high enough so they could come up over the top and tuck down inside, to hide all the cardboard.



I used hot glue to attach the cover to the box, and put a really good blob of it into each corner to make sure it stayed neat.

And that's it. A really simple little make that should not have taken 2 years!

I'm super happy with how it turned out, far better than I hoped :)

And it would even make a rather nice little crochet-work-basket-cum-tray :) I see more of these in my future :)




Til next time,
Jillxxx

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Welcome to Finish for the Weekend, a weekly chance to link up and share with the blogging community some of the projects you have completed this week. The only rule is that your post must be about an item you have finished this week, hopefully to help reduce some of those piles of UFO's!

Here's how to join in:

1. Write a blog post about your finished project.

2. Link back to Finish for the Weekend by adding this text as a link on your post:

http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Finish%20for%20the%20Weekend

3. Publish your post

4. Link back from here to your post by clicking "Add Link" and adding your post's URL

5. Spread the bloggy love by visiting and commenting on the other Finish for the Weekend posts.

The Finish for the Weekend post will open for new links on a Friday at 12noon London time, and it will stay open until Monday at 12noon to allow for overseas bloggers to join in. These times may vary but I will do my best to keep it roughly the same. Looking forward to seeing all your posts !