I sewed a purse!

And I am so stinking proud if it!  It's more of a diaper bag, really.  I have big plans for hauling this bag around town when the new baby arrives.  The pattern is Amy Butler's Cosmo Bag from her book Style Stitches. 

I picked out the lovely pale grey fabric long ago without any real plans for it. I loved it on the bolt and the bolt was running low, so I snagged it.  Once I decided to use it for this bag, Ingrid helped me select the contrasting grey on the handles and button band.  Didn't she make a good choice?  Ingrid has a great eye for color.

I used a grape thread for the stitching to add a nice contrast and to tie the outside together with the inside, which is grape-striped and wacky and fun.

Here's a closer look at the lovely pale grey and the deep pleats on the outside of the bag. I really love this fabric.  I'm not a big one for bold splashy prints and I usually lean towards solid colors for my own clothing choices.  This patterned grey is, for me, quite a statement.

One of the fantastic things about this bag is all of its pockets.  I'm constantly carrying around my kids' stuff and I know that won't end any time soon.  It really helps to have nooks and crannies in my bag to tuck away the things I might need to locate quickly.  The side pocket is great for the kids' water bottles and will also hold baby bottles and sippy cups down the road.

On the inside I customized the pockets for the things I knew I would need.  That's the great thing about sewing it myself: I can custom fit the pockets to my own stuff.  It's very simple to customize the pockets, too, especially in this bag. All I had to do was place the item in the pocket and stick a pin on each side of the item so I'd know where to put the seam. The striped lining was a big help, because I'd just sew my seam straight down the stripe I had pinned.  This is the biggest pocket and holds a changing pad for diaper changing.  I don't need the changing pad until May, so right now I use it to store my KnitPicks chart keeper.  Both are stored in the pocket in the above photo. The pocket has enough slack that I'll be able to pop a few diapers in there too.

I made an EpiPen pocket, too, since I need to carry them everywhere and if--heaven forbid--I ever need one I'll need to grab it quickly.

I added in a clip to hold my keys as well. Some of the other patterns in the Amy Butler book included little tabs like the one attached to the clip.  I used her technique and a clip I found at JoAnn's.  I've seen other clips I like better in other handbags, so I'll keep an eye out for them when I shop at craft stores. But in a bag this big I definitely need a clip to keep my keys from getting lost!

Here's the cell phone pocket. The lining fabric is just the kind of print that, while it appeals to me, I'd never wear. Using it as a purse lining is just the ticket, because I can enjoy the prettiness without having to feel like I'm wearing something kooky.

And here's a series of pockets for my sunglasses, wallet, and some of the kids' gear.  The pocket at the lower left with blue stuff peeking out is the pocket Ing has designated as her own. As such it is filled with Tinkerbell coloring books and crayons.

 

It's a big bag and can hold a ton.  Here we were on our way to soccer practice with my knitting, entertainments for Ing, RC's gear, and of course snacks and water bottles.  If I could go back and add anything to this bag, it would be a waterproof zipper pouch to stick the snacks in. Next time...

The pattern, by the way, was really clearly written and easy to follow.  I never felt confused because the directions were so clear. This pattern required a large amount of interfacing, which was my largest stumbling block.  It took a long time to cut and fuse it all.  It's worth it, though, to make the bag so sturdy.  Once that step was done, it was smooth sailing to make the purse and I did it in about a weekend--albeit a weekend when MMD was out of town and I needed a way to keep busy when I couldn't sleep!

Snow Day

 

 

 

 

A little bit of coloring...
A little bit of painting trim...
A litle more coloring...
A little bit of tea...
And a whole lot of snow...
Perfect.

The Closet of Doom

Though gaining a daughter, I'm losing a craft room--a sacrifice I'm willing and excited to make! But it's time to start sorting out and setting up so I can have the room ready in June. This will be a slow process for me, squeezed in mostly while MMD reads the kids bedtime books and on the rare occasions I'm alone in the house. Most of my yarn and fabric will be stored here, in our venerable linen closet.

Man oh man is this an area we've neglected. When Ing was a baby (and let's face it, at that point RC was still pretty much a baby) we'd just toss stuff in there anywhere it would fit. We had two babies! we told ourselves. Someday we'll have time to sort through it all! As if. It's now crammed full of baby stuff, and Ing is nearly four. On the other hand, at least we have a lot of baby stuff pretty handy. But there's also three years worth of expired medicine, plus all our towels and bed linens, plus who knows what. This closet is a wreck.

The wreckage has spilled out and beyond the confines of the closet. I'm posting these pictures as a form of self-flagellation, in the hopes that by publicly shaming myself in this way I'll actually get around to cleaning and organizing a little bit sooner. Someday the Closet of Doom will be a lovely place full of all my favorite toys. Someday soon.

The Join

I think my last post about Arwen was a little confusing. I had meant to go back and add photos to that post to explain myself better, and it just didn't happen...ah well. Such is life. At any rate, my knitting progressed to the point where it resulted in an amorphous blob: 

I love amorphous-blob type knitting. Baby surprise jacket? Classic. So I got a big kick out of this sweater. In the amorphous blob pictured above, the cast on edge is the back of the neckline, about midway through the piece.  The rectangular area above it is the upper back, and the two little oddly shaped flaps below it are the front left and right. The whole thing sort of dangles about the neck like an ascot. The needle at the bottom is the large circular that will hold the whole sweater. The shorter bamboo needles at the top are there because I was about to join the sweater at the armhole--I actually knit that part on the large circ, then put the stitches on waste yarn while I did the front, then slid in the bamboo straights because I didn't have another circ in the correct size.

To join at the armhole, the sweater is knit across one front, then the amorphous blob is twisted upward and knit across the back, like I was about to do in the picture above. Once knitted across the back, the same procedure repeats for the other armhole; the blob is just twisted downward.

{now it's flipped right side up}

 Now every stitch is all on the same needle and the blob looks much more like the top of a sweater normally does. At this point, I knit about another inch and put all the stitches on waste yarn to try it on.

Oh! It really is a sweater!

I actually avoided this step for more than a few days because the armholes seemed absurdly large. I was pretty sure I was going to try this puppy on and be disappointed.

{Oh by the way--I'm pregnant! :-)}

The armholes didn't seem too out of control when I raised my arm...and it was comfy...and meant to be layered...

But putting my arm down I could see it was a no go. Those armholes are out of control. Way too big for this to be a sweater I'll wear often. I could easily just rip back the bottom front and bottom back and start the armhole shaping sooner. This is, after all, the big appeal of a top-down sweater: try it on as you go and fix your mistakes before you're done.  But I had another issue.

The cables look muddy to me. This is a tweedy yarn and I swatched the cables before casting on to make sure I would like how they looked--and I did like how they looked. All I can think is that in my big cable juggle-y switcheroo I messed up the cables somehow. I also don't like how they just sort of begin halfway down the neckline. In the original sweater the cables wrap around the hood in a lovely way. I had planned to just pick up neckline stitches for the hood, but now I think the cable pattern will look disjointed.  I'm not sure how to make that work.

I'm thinking of frogging her. I'm thinking of just following the pattern as written and trying to make it a little longer. This whole thing started because I like my sweaters long, but maybe I should assume a professional designer knows more about building a sweater than I do...

Arwen Progress

My top down sweater continues apace. Once I reached the bottom of the armpit, and following the directions in Custom Knits, I went back to the top to pick up stitches. This was a slow process of carefully unravelling the provisional cast on and adding each loop to the needle. On each side I picked up seventeen stitches, leaving the middle stitches on waste yarn. Later I'll pick those ones up for the neckline.

The dark brown yarn is the provisional cast on. I like using this cast on more and more, since it allows me to go back and change things if I don't really like the way the sweater turns out. Honestly that's part of my whole love of yarn--you can't really mess it up, since you can always go back and rip out and change things around.

Once the yarn was on the needle and I got going in the right direction, the next step was to increase for the neckline. And once all those stitches were on, I started the cable charts. These defied logic for me for a little while. Essentially, at this stage in the game, I'm knitting upside down. In a usual knit row, for example, the yarn hangs at the right edge as the row begins. With this project, it hangs at the left edge. This made the cable charts a little confusing initially, so I decided to do them backwards. Instead of starting a right side row at the right end of the chart, I'm starting it at the left end, because this is where the yarn starts. Maybe this is the wrong way to do it--maybe I'm overthinking it--but I guess I'll see as the cable repeats unfold and show me how they look.

Soon I'll join it all together at the armpits and it'll be one round sweater instead of a large misshapen piece whose ends I tinker with.

Crafty kids

It usually happens about once a week. Maybe if we're lucky, every few days. It usually starts with something small.

"Mommy, I want to cut something." Out come the scissors and paper. Little hands get to work.

Next we need glue. 



Little hands start sticking and folding and assembling.

They are busy. They rush around. They focus in. They have a mission.

 

They discuss their plans and their creations and they give each other tips.

I just pull up a pile of yarn and enjoy the ride. I love watching them make, especially in such a basic and elemental way, and see how they allow themselves the time and process of putting something together. I love the results, I love the mess, I love the way these little bits of paper and glue become something real to them, something they treasure and keep, something they save and put away carefully when the time comes. I love they way we all get drawn in and gather around the making table. I love most of all the way it comes out of a basic need to make, not a basic need to have whatever the finished object is that day. I think we all have a basic need to create.

I hope they'll always find the time and space to meet that need.

Build it yourself

I've been hoarding some gift cards to my LYS and finally went ahead and cashed them in.  I had just enough to buy a sweater's worth of Blackstone Tweed in the Salt Water colorway. I'm trying a new (to me) experiment with this yarn. I want to try modifying an already existing pattern, Kate Gilbert's beautiful Cardigan for Arwen, into a top-down sweater.

I've never really modified much about a pattern before, so it's a new exercise for me, but I'm excited to stretch my knitting mind out a little bit. Several people on Ravelry have already done this modification, so I have them to use as a guide and resource. The book Custom Knits has detailed descriptions of how to make a top-down sweater, and that's my main resource for the sweater.

It seems pretty easy and logical. I followed the directions and knit a few gauge swatches. Once I decided which gauge felt right, I cast on and started knitting. I had an initial setback because I started out following the raglan pattern--I'm more of a raglan girl, and I'd made a few before. But once I separated the front and started in on the cable pattern, I realized a raglan would not work, since I needed more stitches on the front pieces in order to fit in the cable pattern. So I ripped it out and started again, this time with the pattern for a top down sweater with set-in sleeves.

I'm not very far, but that's okay. I think I'm on the right track now. This is the beginning of the top back. It stretches from shoulder to shoulder (or as MMD said when he measured me, from the acromion to the acromion; such is life with a physical therapist for a husband) and will be knit downward to the bottom of the armpit. Then I'll start the front top.

I'm excited to see where this goes, and I hope to keep posting to show my progress.