too hot for longies

I finished the longies for Baby last night. And then of course today it's 85 and humid. Where'd that come from? But I dressed her in them anyways. And then went down to the Boston Knit-Out! That was fun. But hot. Since I was one of the first 25 to add their logo to my blog, I got a free bag of yarn, and who can argue with free yarn? It was neat to see so many knitters on the Common, but unfortunately the girls were too uncomfortable to stay long. Did I mention it was hot?

The longies are wicked cute, but she JUST fits in them, which means in 2 weeks she won't. Ooops. The problem came from the fact that I changed patterns halfway through, so didn't make the rise high enough. An extra 2 inches would have been good.

I'm cheating on my knitting

I have a confession to make. I'm working on multiple knitting projects at the same time. Until recently, I've always only worked on one project at a time. I thought it would be "cheating" if, in the middle of a project, I got bored and started a new one. Plus, I also thought I would never get around to going back to the original project and finishing it. So I forced myself to finish a project before starting a new one. In the instances that I got incredibly bored with a project, I'd just stop knitting for weeks at a time.

But now I've finally gotten over it. I don't know what did it. Probably the fact that I have SO many projects I want to do, I couldn't settle on just one.

So I've got that little green clutch that I'm still got going on. I've decided to add some little white beads on either side of the daisy, so once I'm done with the beading I'll just have to sew the bag together and add the lining and zipper. Then I've also started a lace poncho for Marya. I've only done four rows of that. And there's this pair of longies I've almost finished for Baby. It started out as another curly purly soaker but then the weather started getting colder, and I realized having longies is so much better than trying to get regular baby pants over a cloth diapered baby butt. So after doing the waistband, I just changed to the Wooly Wonder Wonderpants pattern. I've also just barely started the Peace Fleece Child's Shepard Jacket.

The problem I'm having though, is that I usually always use my Denise Interchangables, and all these patterns require pretty much the same needles. It takes some manipulation whenever I switch between projects. Oh well. It's worth it to be able to knit different projects depending on my mood.

been working on some bags

Actually, I finished working on this bag about a month ago, but yesterday I just finally gave it to Narie, for whom it was a Christmas present. That's right, a Christmas present, 8 months late. But it wasn't really that bad! I had the knitting and felting done by Christmas, I just wanted to put a zipper in it to make it a functional bag. I don't feel like little hand bags are all that useful if stuff keeps falling out of them. So I stalled for months and months. I'm so not good at sewing. But I finally got the zipper in. I messed it up royally of course. I didn't pin it first, so it doesn't line up correctly, but it zips, and stuff will stay in, and it just lies a little crooked now. It makes it more charming of course. And now after telling the story, I realize that the fact that it was almost ready for when it was supposed to be a present and then took so long to finish the last little bit is much worse than have the whole thing not nearly ready in time. Oh well.

A little about the bag... It's my own design, knit of Peace Fleece in Moscow Magic Pink and Antarctica White. Knit in the round on size 13. The snowflake was a complete pain to do. I made the mistake of thinking it would be easy to knit it using intarsia. It wasn't easy. In retrospect I came up with the idea of embroidering it on, so that body of the bag would have been much quicker to knit. I assume that that would felt up reasonably well. I'll have to try that next time.

This cute little clutch was knitted much more recently. I finished with the knitting just last week. It's a pattern from 25 bags to knit by Emma King. This is the very first time I've ever embellished anything I've knit. Isn't the little daisy cute? The white cotton yarn (Henry's Attic Inca organic cotton in Ecru) isn't the best choice for doing it, but I don't have much else in stock that would go well. The pattern calls for 5 daisys per side, but the 2 I've done so far (front and back) took so long I might just leave it like this. But with practice it'll probably go quicker. The body of the bag is knit again with Peace Fleece in Kamchatka Seamoss. Because the weight of Pleace Fleece worsted is heavy than the Rowan Kid Classic called for, I didn't double the yarn throughout as the pattern calls for. The dimensions still worked out pretty similar using number 9 needles. I'm going to sew in a zipper again, but this time pin it so it goes on straight, plus I'm going to line the bag. I just feel like it will be more practical to have it lined, since it's not a felted bag, and stuff put in the bag might poke through. Here's a close up of the daisy.