Inventing

I finished up the Oh Helen shawl on Wednesday. Fringed and blocked it.

It turned out great.

I was a little skeptical that it would look good and not  home-made, so
I bought two little white sweaters just in case.

Joe said the shawl looked way better! Yea!  Received lots of compliments
at the wedding, and no thought it was made by me!

The next thing was finding a bag to go with the outfit.  Believe
me I looked.  $25-$30 little bags and I did not like any of them.
ugh x 10000000000.

See the bag in the picture I'm holding...yep...made it!!

I did a little poking around on Ravelry. I knew what I wanted but
didnt see anything exact.  I had tons of the Berroco Captiva
yarn left. (hate that yarn by the way - working with it is a
nightmare)...anyway.  Thinking way back to the booga bags
we all made.

 I started out with size 6 needles (suggested size
for yarn is 8) I wanted it tight.  It was too big looking so
I went down to a size 4.

Cast on 30 stitches and knit 25 rows.  Picked up stitches all the way around.
Knit 10 rows or so, and decided it needed beads....which I had from a
project many years ago.

Its so hard to see the beads in these pictures.  I staggered the beads around,
with 3 plain rows inbetween.  I used my cell phone for the bottom template and
worked up from there.

Once I decided it was big enough, I Knit 5 YO, K2tog, all the way around.
then knit a few more rows, and added a final row of beads. I used the crochet
hook method to add beads.  Thank goodness it rained Thursday or I never
would have got this done.

Then I decided it needed a ruffle. So I k1, k1 / increase one tbl all of the way
around, and knit a few more rows.

Then worked on the i-cord. I put beads at each end of the icord.  Started
the i-cord with 4 stitches, but it was too big...went down to 2 stitches, and it
was dainty enough.

Now I did get a few compliments on the bag too!

Also this week, I started the sock from yarn from Martha. I started out
using same pattern as Ruth, but it was not fun to knit. Ruth's looked fab!
I am such a tight knitter, I was having trouble picking up the yo and bringing
over 2 stitches.   I ended up using the pattern Grumperina made last 
K 2 rows, seed stitch one row...

I like them a lot!  The pattern is not soft thougth, but the bottom of the foot
is and that's all that matters.

Worked a little on this too:

Ruth  did not have any pics to share.

Martha is working her way down both socks. Says she has wild
yarn for the toes!!!! So pretty...

Have a great week!