It's in the Bag

I spent the last week knitting and lining a knitting bag and am so insanely pleased with how it turned out that I'm devoting an entire entry to it. Like most knitters, my knitting tools have been spread throughout various drawers, bags, and cubbies and I can never find anything when I want it. So I decided one day to create the ultimate knitting bag. It took a week to knit from wool yarn and the finished demensions were 3 1/2 feet long by 2 feet wide. Then I knit about eight feet of I-cord.

It wasn't done yet--it needed a trip through the washer to felt.

That's more like it! It's now about 12 inches high and 13 inches across at the bottom. This wool really felts down a lot!

Hmmm, looks kind of empty, doesn't it?

Not really....

And what is this in the bottom?

Trap door!

Which hides all the circular needles that I don't use very often.

It took me about 10 hours to line it, since I"d never made anything like this before. There are some things I'd do differently, but all in all, the finished bag turned out the way I wanted it.

Guess I don't have any excuse not to finish Ram's Christmas sweater now! :)

Summer Knitting

Someone remarked yesterday that it must be way too hot to knit in the summertime. I replied that I don't knit heavy sweaters then, but there are lots of other things a person can knit that won't heat them up too much....

For example, itty bitty baby socks,

Fun felted fishies (the front two aren't finished yet),

Soft Alpaca wristlets,

Fuzzy baby hoodies (this looks much nicer in person. I don't know why everything knit from this yarn looks weird when photographed, but it does. The hoody is very light and soft as cashmere),

And a teddy bear sweater, knit from cotton yarn.

I told them that knitting wasn't all there was to do. I've been trying my hand at applique quilting and made this the other day. It's 14 x 14 inches. Now if I can just figure out how to get the excess stickum from the fusable web off the front. See that little smudge just under the dragonfly's wing? Gonna have to look it up somewhere.

I'm trying out a pattern loosely based on the Randomly Slanted Sweater pattern from the spring 2000 issue of Knitter's Magazine, using the Iris yarn from yesterday. It's created from bias strips and then sewn together. Here's the beginning.

So...no, it isn't too hot to knit in the summertime but you do need to keep your iced tea from dripping on your knitting! :)