Boasting and gloating.

As promised - one bowling bag, tadaaaa!!!!

This bugger took me the best part of a weekend and cost some sore fingers - but it was totally worth it methinks. I made the bag based on a tutorial by qazicat, which I found through the craftster forums.



Her tute was for a much smaller bag from the looks of it, there are no pattern pieces, but I just figured out the size I wanted, and created the side shapes first. The other pieces followed on from there.

I'm exceedingly happy with my bag, it's perfect for work (I made it big enough to hold file folders, as well as pockets for other goodies...



I stayed quiet on the first day out with this bag - the next day I couldn't hold it in anymore, I managed to boast to at leasst 3 different people. The poor spiders got it on Friday AND Saturday - "look what I made". Now here I go again on the blog - I hope that it will be out of my system after this post. I mean, come on, the bag is far from perfect, I'm not overly pleased with the handles - they look a little too 'home-made', know what I mean? And I didn't get a good match with the black panelling at the side. But, it works and it makes me smile.


In knitting news. I finished a pair of Mother & Daughter socks, for a wonderful colleague and her daughter, who are re-loacating to Ireland and will be sorely missed. I'm pretty pleased with how well these socks match each other - this is important for non-knitters, who struggle to appreciate the "unique pairing" of colors us knitters can make.



pattern: basic toe-up (figure 8 cast on) stockinette socks with short-row heels. I found the sock-u-lator II very helpful for figuring out how many stitches to cast on.
needles: Addi turbo 32", US #2 (3mm)
yarn: Lana Grossa Cotton Fantasy, in color #809. and a little bit of Regia cotton surf for the mother socks (left over from the Ampersand Socks) - the cotton fantasy is almost exactly the same as cotton surf. I actually like this yarn a lot - even though it's a cotton blend - and think they will be pretty hard wearing.



I just hope that both mother and daughter love them - oh! and that they fit :)

Happy Father's Day.

It's all a charade!

First of all, I want to thank everyone for your lovely comments about the cranes - all so sweet, and I even got comments from new people - thanks for stopping by!

On to the post, I've had these socks done a while now and feel like I've already posted about them but realised that I hadn't - oops. Anyway, the Charade socks, are complete:


Pattern: Charade socks by Sandra.
Yarn: Plymouth Sockotta in color #15
Needles: Knitpicks 32" #1 - magic loop method
Adaptations: I did make the heel a little longer so that the sock could accomodate my high arches - other than that I stuck to the pattern as is. If I were to do the sock again I would probably do toe up with short row heels. I love the pattern though, it really was fun to knit - thanks Sandra!!!!


Note: While I know this yarn will probably make the longest lasting socks ever - I hated it, I didn't like the feel of it, the short bursts of color were a little too short, leaving me with a muddled mix. There were several knots in the skein - bah! I hate knots.

Next time: a bowling bag awaits some photo weather for the photo-shoot that it deserves (yup, I'm proud of it).

1000 Cranes

Not a lot to show off on the knitting front. So, for Earthchick, Samantha, Ceci and anyone else who might be interested - here's some shots of the Schrodinger Household's 1000 origami cranes I spoke of on the 7 random things post.

One lonely crane, with quarter to show size.



1000 origami cranes in a glass vase - pretty rainbow.


Cranes close-up.