Yarn and a bag-to-be

And now back to your regularly scheduled KNITTING blog. ;o)

One of my LYSs recently changed ownership and moved to a new location. My dear sweet husband agreed to accompany me on a search for the new place. We found it pretty easily, and it is in a cute little area where shop fronts look like they haven't been updated in years...but in a good way. It has an old timey charm.

Anyway, of course I couldn't walk out of there without some yarn! I found this stuff called Maizy by Crystal Palace Yarns, in the colorway Stormy Purple.



I've since swatched a little and it's rather splitty...but I still like the color and the feel of it. It's similar to that Panda Cotton too, which I have two balls of. Speaking of which, these are dense little balls of yarn...very small, but 204 yds each!

Moving on...to photos of my Socks That Rock! I had links before but I feel obligated to show actual photos. ;)

Here's the STR Lightweight in Fire on the Mountain (not a great photo):



Here's a photo of one side of it...



and the other side of it...



It is amazing, gorgeous, rich color. Can't wait to see how it knits up.

This is my STR lightweight in Pink Granite:



That will make some beautiful and yet practical socks. I wear a lot of pink and black, so they'll be great.

Now, on to my bag project. I think I mentioned before that I want to make a purse and decided on STR as a good candidate for it. I wanted something that'll hold up and what better than sock yarn, right?

I decided on Peaseblossom colorway (after MUCH deliberation) and got that in STR Heavyweight. Here it is:



And here is the obligatory yarn cake photo (which, I might add, refuses to stay intact and has been the most misbehaving yarn cake I've ever encountered! But I guess I'll let it slide.)



As I also mentioned before, I was thinking of either a woven stitch or the one from My So Called Scarf for the bag. Well...okay, here's my swatch, scarf pattern at top, some stockinette in the middle, and woven st at the bottom:



Based on that swatch, I decided I loved the look of the woven stitch. But it didn't like me. I kept messing it up, and as you can see by the below pic, my gauge/tension changed a bit and so did the color patterning. You can see a definite line there, and also can see that it started pulling in. I think that was about the time that I started getting frustrated with it!



It's pretty though!



So...I gave up on it. I cast off and will make this piece into a coin purse to use with the purse.



New plan: stockinette bag with possibly a patch on the front as a pocket, made out of the My So Called Scarf pattern, which I think is really pretty, and isn't as tedious as that blasted woven pattern!



There! I think I'm all caught up! I finally caught up on reading blogs, and am feeling my blogging mojo returning a bit. We'll see if I keep up on this!