Topaz: All Tangled Up.: A Ballsack for my Boyfriend.

Last year I decided to make my Partner a sneaky Christmas gift - He knew I was knitting him something but he had no idea what it was.

I'm horrible at doing the whole "keeping secret gifts secret" thing. I get all excited about the project and want to talk about it all the time >.<

My partner is a qualified Sparky who has a mild obsession with juggling and also works as a clown and juggler/stiltwalker. (Yes, I'm dating a party clown.) I'd already gotten some of Opal's "Electrician" sock yarn for him, planning to somehow measure his feet without him knowing and make him some socks for Christmas.

How on EARTH do you measure someone's feet without them knowing? Ply them with strong drink or chloroform?

. . . Yeah, no. Not going there!

About the middle of last year he was complaining about not having anywhere on his costumes to easily stash his juggling balls, and he also had an accident where his best contact-juggling ball fell out of his pocket and cracked when it hit the ground. About the time he was most vociferous I had this book out of the library:

Inside this book there is a pattern for an item called a "belt purse", a long tube-shaped bag that has a slit opening near the top and also a loop to enable you to conveniently hang it from your belt.

The gauge for this belt purse meant it could be knitted up with the Electrician-coloured yarn, which is a very bright and clown-like colourway. (If you stretched your imagination to a clown who happened to like grey, blue and fluro yellow)

BINGO! Christmas gift idea required.

That pattern as written in the book was a little too small for juggling balls, so I checked the dimensions of the finished bag against the diameter of his favourite set of juggling balls and discovered that all I needed to do was double the pattern in every direction.

My problem was that all the patterns are in a really really fine gauge, since the most commonly used knitting needles in the Andes (according to this book) are made from the spokes of bicycle wheels.

That blew my mind.

I'm not a fan of tiny needles and lots of stitches. When I saw the final count of rows I'd need I nearly cried! Thank goodness for Opal's colourways and their shorter sections of colours that stopped me from dying of boredom.

The bag is made in one piece and knit in the round. The only sewing I had to do was to reinforce the edge of the hole and to attach a tassel to the bottom of the bag.

Ta-dah! I gave you the finished Juggling Ball Bag!