Bag lady (and a crochet shawl)

A quick run through of my current knitting wips (works-in-progress) the other day saw my total at 14. This is in part due to the casting on frenzy of last week, but also I just have a short attention span. I am comfortable working on a large number of projects at once IF I can keep them segregated and organised in project bags. But things were getting a little out of hand.
I’ve been selling quite a few of my project bags and sock knitting kits of late, or I would just have commandeered some more bags from that stash. Being unable to do that, I decided to spend a morning making up some more bags for myself.

  
I started with a ‘fluff bucket’. These are pretty much like my large project bags, but without the fancy pockets and drawstring and handle. Just a lined, soft fabric bucket, basically. But they take so much tiiiiiime. Time that I’d rather be using doing a thousand other things. So I got one done, and then decided I needed a quicker option.

  
I can get one of these done in twenty minutes if I ignore perfectionism. That’s more like it. 

A couple of double drawstring ones first…

  

Then some little box-based ones with toggles…

    
This one was meant to be for sale. But seriously, it’s coffee and donuts. I had to keep it. I don’t eat donuts, but I sure do like coffee.

  
Then a larger one. When this was done I realised it needed a handle. So the next one got a handle. I dyed this piece of fabric when I was 15. I hung onto it because I knew I’d need it someday!! (24 years later…)

  
All of my bags are fully lined and have internal pockets, one for needles and one for stitch markers. I also have started doing one small pocket for a cable needle which, it turns out, is really handy.

  
Then I got a little bit fancy with linen and appliqué and funny linings and a little clasp for stitch markers…

   
 
My project bag tally now sits at 11 in total. 3 projects are still currently in plastic boxes. Because I save all my best fabrics for the bags I sell, my own are generally a mismatch of higgeldy piggeldy offcuts that clash violently with everything, including each other. But I care not. My favourite is still this one. 🙂

  
Of course I’ve also been knitting. Some secret knitting on my own new patterns, plus a couple of last minute projects for my Finland trip…a reeeally warm beanie, the pattern is ‘Hat most likely to succeed‘ by Alexandra Virgiel. I liked this pattern. It’s an interesting cable I hadn’t tried before, and I think I’ll take another of these as my plane knitting project.

  
And…cue dramatic music…..more crochet. My mum’s friend is donating lots of cakes of her beautiful handmade soap to a ‘farmer’s wife’ outback charity, and we are making little hanging bags for them all. 

  
So it was a busy week, but I also did another Craftsy class, My First Crochet Shawl. I didn’t enjoy this class as much as the crochet cardigan one, but at least I had enough yarn to finish this one.

   
   
I rather like it. The yarn is Lincraft ‘Splendour’ in the Red Sunset colour way, which I got at more than 50% off last weekend, so this is an AU$9 shawl. 🙂

  
 8 days to go. I’m pretty sure I can fit more knitting in….it’s 34 degrees Celsius all week here, and difficult to getting the ‘cosy knitting’ mojo on. Maybe if I turn the air con down a bit….
B 🙂