Gold Bag

I've completed two projects in recent weeks. The 'discipline' of putting them on this blog has helped quite a bit. It makes me hold myself to finishing one thing before beginning another. I can't help but wonder how would my life have been different had I established this habit when I was younger. Still, I'm younger than I will be next year...




Anyhow. I took advantage of some brief morning sunshine to photograph the bag I just finished. It still needs threads trimmed and a final press, but the sun waits for no one. 





I tried attaching the handles between the shell and the lining and put a contrasting, divided pocket inside. The lining is hand stitched to the shell. I'm undecided about whether this is an improvement. On one hand, finishing the ends of the handles is unnecessary; on the other I'm not confident about only having one row of hand stitch attaching the lining. Will have to think about this some more.







This finishes off the green and gold project that started off as a notebook cover. It didn't work because the fabric was too stiff to wrap nicely around a notebook. On the other hand it might make a pretty good cover...something else to consider! 

Oops - 'scuse my camera strap - Picmonkey can't save me from that!

I liked the effect well enough to do a similar piece in gold with bright green thread for the other side. I've plenty more of those strips of fabric. A few more of these bags and my scrap stash might be a bit more manageable.

Can you tell I was in a hurry!?

Another project was this peach coloured jumper. I'd intended to have to finish all my projects before starting ANY others, but this isn't entirely practical. For one, I go to a knitting group twice a month and it wouldn't do to be sewing there. For two, knitting is much more portable and practicable on the move. When I turned this in to the knitting group I was told I'd just doubled my output for last year: this is the second jumper I've given them. She said it with a laugh and I replied that no one could accuse me of being fast. 




This is the same pattern as the purple one, but for some reason I struggled to get the neckline right. I worked on our Budapest-Vienna trip. My sister-in-law, Jane, watched me rip it out and study the instructions repeatedly. When I got home I had more quiet time and inner calm to look at it again and the solution became obvious. I can see my knitting has improved a great deal over the last year or two, in that I can now spot and correct most of my mistakes. It doesn't seem like much, but to me it is huge: an alternative to starting over (again).





Well, now I'm off for a day in the kitchen. I got a great deal on soon-to-spoil mushrooms and red peppers at 30p a bag. I washed and dried the peppers when I got home. Now I'm going to do the same for mushrooms and spend the day roasting veg for the freezer!