My friend works in an industrial sales office, and is around men most of the day. She lives in the Midwest, but I think would be more comfortable in a writing cabana by the ocean where she had nothing to do all day but write.

Since I can’t buy her the cabana in the Caribbean, I’m making her a desk set instead. It’s one of those awful, uber-cute desk sets, too – the kind you find at White Elephant sales and bad parties.

Yes, I’m that kind of friend. ~leer~

But in all seriousness, the box for paperclips and the stapler cover shaped like a shark are worth the kitsch. Here’s a picture of the kit in its entirety:

I’ve finished knitting the cabana box cover bits, and now all that’s left is to felt them. Since the rest needs to be felted too, I figured I’d do it all at one time to save washer water. Here are the box pieces:

This is the base piece, done in plain stockinette stitch (which is knit a row, purl a row). I actually finished these and realize I don’t have a picture of that, so that will have to wait. But here are some more pix:

This is the base all finished up. As you can see, it’s quite long. It will shrink when it’s felted, and it will be sewn together over a plastic mesh base.

The bottom is knit in plain stockinette in a sand color. At first, I couldn’t figure out why they selected a mud brown for such a cheerful piece, and then I realized that it’s supposed to be the sand floor.

Duh.

These were fun to knit. The cabana caps are just about the right size to be a cat hat.

Yeah, don’t try that at home…

Knit in the round, you can see the gradual decrease pattern in the grid under the knitting. You decrease each of the four sides on the decrease rounds, so it has a very pronounced triangular or pyramidical shape.

Next we come to the wrist rest. Knit in intarsia, it’s got a complex little picture of fish and kelp. Quite cute, if you’re needlepointing.

Rather more complex if you’re knitting. Each of those strings hanging down is a bobbin of color that you pick up and knit with at the relevant point in the design. While one could knit complex needlepoint or counted cross-stitch charts this way, it is very detailed and requires concentration.

I’m just past the halfway point in the intarsia design, and should be done in another week. The rows take about 15 minutes each, since they require wrapping each new color. I could not for the life of me figure out why the stripes on the edges are brown and light brown, until someone said “oh, when does the color start after the sand?”

Bong.

Sand.

Duh.

~knityfy~