Knitting Dragonflies

In a continuing effort to tackle the stash bins. I gathered all of my yarn up that is left over from other projects. I am surprised to find that I am able to separate the colors into, yellows (quite a lot of yellow and gold), greens and blues, black and grey and reds. I have an idea to make a scrappy sweater, after searching for patterns and looking at my yarn I decide against that and decide to search for bag patterns. I had the Big Bag pattern by Maia Discoe , in my Ravelry queue. I think this would be a great stash busting bag if I can get the colors to work. Her bag has such a nice stripe pattern of various widths. After playing around awhile I decide that the blues and greens and yellows are my best color combination. The pattern is knitted with two strands of yarn, and I decide to carry one yellow strand along the entire bag. Hoping this will tie the colors together. While keeping the pattern stripes with the blues and greens. Amount of scrap yarn: I had approx 38 oz of ya...

I started out with my first handspun, and decided to make a plain little knitted in the round bag to store my Tarot cards. It was my first attempt at spinning on a spindle, so it was pretty wonky. Thick and thin, so the square gathered up as the gauge changed. Just a row of ktog, yo, knit 2, repeat for the drawstring, and I’m ready to sew it up. Then I decided that I didn’t like the plain beige. Being in the middle of a Kool Aid Dyeing frenzy , I decided to give it some color. A little microwave dyeing , and then decided to felt it , because the shape was irregular enough that I couldn’t think of how it could be used.  Well, felting is unpredictable, sometimes too small, or too fat. But like life, if given lemons, lemonade it is. And so my tarot bag became a make up bag. Which even works out  better. Due to the triangle shape, everything fits it in perfectly. Great, a cute little bag and it holds just enough to make a girl pretty, and fit in my purse! May...

I bought a needle felting kit from Wildhare Fiber Studio on Etsy .  It was reasonable, and had everything I needed. I have never done any needle felting, but was intrigued by the Spin, Knit and Life blog and her results. She directed me to this great site . I decided to begin with my first attempt on my Sophie bag by Julie Anderson (rav link) . Which I actually saw on the Instructables site first and became interested in. It is a very easy felted bag, it would be great for a first time knitted project, the handles provide a quirky interest and make it look more complicated than it is. Bag is quickly knit and I start on the handle, along the way I decide to make it a tri handle twined bag instead of two twined together. Because, hey who can make a pattern without a little tweaking. Then just twist them all and attach. Easy. Prefelted photo and a close up of the handle. Here we are post felting. Then I decided to pick out some fabric to line it ...

I saw this bag in Bags That Rock and fell in love with it. It is a nice across the body, slouchy bag, with an easy style. From the beginning I had trouble deciding if I needed to knit it one stranded, (this looked much too thin), or double stranded, (oops, not enough yarn). Like any bewildered knitter, I just put my head down and started over. All of the pieces done, I wasn’t happy with the thinness of the yarn knitted up, but I kept going. Single crochet around all of the pieces. Now we sc the pieces together. And add the bottom, oops, the bottom is much too small!! I sc several rows around to make it fit, and then sewed it in. All together and ready to felt!! Now the fun really begins… All fuzzy and drying. It did end up to be quit thick and ready to finish up. I plan to get some fabric to line it with and haven’t decided on how to finish the closure. (zip, snap?) Straps are long enough to be worn across the body, the straps are knotted at the top, so the length ...

This pattern is from Bags That Rock . Yarn is Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted. I picked two of the kettle dyed variegated skeins that complimented each other. (or so I hoped). This pattern is very easy, and suitable for a beginner knitter. It was a fast to knit, the “propeller” patterns on the purse are done in duplicate stitch. This was the first time I even did it, super easy. After felting I decided to use purchased handles, because I wanted this purse to keep its shape. I usually line my purses and put a strip of pockets across each side, for organization. I had an enormous amount of trouble finding a fabric that “made me happy”, of course the one I found was pricy but worth it. It is a batik fabric with trees on it, I also used a two way zipper, what the heck I’ve already spent more than I planned on. Giggles I was afraid this pattern might make a purse that was too flat and not hold enough, as you can tell, I like to be prepared for anything, guess it wa...