Monster Bag

Raining. Shall we just dispense with getting any work accomplished in the garden? I swear that The Mole has all the luck. Today he had committed to helping around here. With the rain, not likely that he will be out there either mowing or pruning.

This house predates Napoleon. It is always cold. Once again this morning it was 5° warmer outside than in. Given the usual options, you should not be surprised that we opened up windows and doors in an attempt to raise the indoor temperature. Somehow, turning on the boiler when it is 16°c outside just doesn’t meet my common sense test.

Knitting

I have those undone projects. But then there is Ms Copper who left all her heavy sweaters at home in Germany. Her sister could mail a couple, but they wouldn’t arrive before I head out on our cruise or the kids head back to Germany end of next week for vacation.

Besides, it is not like I don’t have wool around the place. Kochoran (Noro), four 100gm hanks of purple/pink that were waiting for a project. Decided to go with Design 1 from Designer Mini Knits  (here – for those of you on Ravelry).

back and fronts

It didn’t take long to knit both back and fronts. Well, it didn’t take long to knit the back. I had to frog the first front back to the arm decrease because I had sort of forgotten to do the neck decreases at the same time. Does this mean I was smarter when I did the second front? Well…… sort of. I got to the arm shaping. No shaping to do because I had failed to do the increases… and then there was the issue of not wanting two right fronts. On the last time through, there were no problems. I bound the shoulders together and have started down the first sleeve (something about wanting the front color to carry into the sleeve cap).

The Monster Bag

No, she did not use a pattern. Ms Copper decided on her bag dimensions, added in the seam allowances and went on from there. She put together the lining first to get warmed up.

Next she used iron on interfacing and wonderunder to put together all the appliqué pieces like these clouds

bag flap

or the Monster

Bag in progress

before stitching everything down. I hadn’t ever used the embroidery attachment for this machine (deployments, moving, commuting, spinning and knitting had gotten in the way). We figured it out together.

The largest discussion was over what she wanted for handles and how to place them.

Then it was just fastening in the lining,

Bag Inside

a button hole, and the googly-eye button to finish it up (click to embiggen).

The Monster Bag

I, for one, am pretty impressed.

Podiobooks

Started Mark of a Druid by Rhonda R. Carpenter.  Like with many of my downloads from Podiobooks, I pull the first couple of episodes then decide from there.