Mama's Got a Brand New Bag

The exciting craft news of the week is that my yarn tote is finished, finally!

I got really excited about this one when I saw it in SnB and it was all ready to go, until I got to the zippered pouch. I decided that it HAD to have a zippered side pouch. Well at that point the procrastination set in and the bag sat neglected in the UFO pile.

After Grant left last weekend I decided it was time to conquer the UFO pile, largely because it contains the quilt I owe Grant to keep him warm in New York.

Well I pulled out the old sewing machine and discovered it was still threaded for the yarn tote. So, rather than re-thread twice I decided to finally finsh the tote, and then move on to the quilt.

An entire Saturday was devoted to that pesky zippered pouch. In the end I couldn't bring myself to include the pouch on the tote because it was so cute as a stand alone pouch. So I now have a tote with an unzippered pouch attached inside and a loose zippered pouch floating around inside.

On the bright side, after using it all week, I discovered this is exactly how I wanted it. The open pouch is great for holding things like keys, cell phone and money, all of which are nice to be able to reach in and grab without unzipping anything. The zippered pouch holds all small knitting items that you don't want floating loose in your bag, like place holders, finishing needles and that cute little lamb tape measure I got for Christmas from Jen.

The button on the front, like the pouches, was another of my embelishments to the pattern. This one was just because I saw the button at Creative Hands and thought it was perfect for the material. Not useful, but very decorative.

So my new tote now holds my three latest active projects - Geek Incognito (the Fibonacci sequence scarf), Trevor's Sweater (now the right size and soon to have stripes as the checks were just too much hassle) and Mel's Indulgence (the Camissimo scarf done in seed stitch for myself).

I must say, I'm very excited that that scarf of mine finally has a design. I started it and ripped it about 10 times before deciding on seed stitch, it really brings out the texture of the yarn.

I think my next online project will be to create a photo album of all my finished projects in our Fibble Gallery.

On the theme of online info, thanks to the spammers I've had to change my blog such that I have to read and approve postings before they're put up. So never fear if you post and it doesn't appear, I just haven't read the comment yet (hence the two comments Mary made in an eariler post).

To answer those two comments - the snowflake was all me. The pattern was intarsia color changes, I scrapped those and went for solid blue with a backstitched snowflake I made up. Took a few tries before I got it to look right.

I'm off to treat myself to some coffee and scarf knitting and take advantage of the sunny day. The sunshine has lulled me into thinking Green Poncho (shown below on me in Mexico over Christams and talked about here) with a lavender t-shirt will be warm enough for the walk across the street, we'll see if I'm right.