I’m not sure how I feel about this pattern. It is ridiculously large and holds a ridiculously small amount of stuff. I like the idea of pocketbooks, but the shape for this one seems so awkward. I tried to make it accommodate more stuff by adding darts in the lower corners, but the darts ended up being so small (due to me not taking seam allowance into consideration when drafting the pattern) that they barely expand the bag at all.

Pattern: From In Stitches, by Amy Butler

I finished a Koolhaas hat this weekend – cast on Thursday, done on Saturday

Yarn: Cascade 220

Needles US6 and US8 circs, US8 DPNs

Modifications: Added 2 rounds of ribbing for a slightly longer hat.

With the weather cooling down I’m doing less bike commuting and more bus commuting. Bus commuting = reading time. I wanted to take better care of the paperback books I read on the bus, especially the ones I am borrowing, so I devised a book cover:

I love it. It’s thick enough that it protects the book from getting bent up and bruised in my purse, but it only adds a few millimeters to the bulk of the book. And the inter-office mailing envelope type closure means it will fit books of almost any thickness.  As long as the books are of the same format. I learned there are, unfortunately, three different formats for paperback  books:

A Format paperbacks are 110 mm x 178mm (4.33″ x 7.01″)in size,
B Format paperbacks are 130 mm x 198mm (5.12″ x 7.8″),
C Format (trade paperbacks) are 135 mm x 216mm (5.32″ x 8.51″)

Doh! Guess I’ll be making 3 different sized paperback book covers.

Alternate title: Covering up your mistakes with bias tape

A couple weeks ago I made the Heather Bailey Marlo Bloom purse. I spent an hour at Joann fabrics looking for 2 coordinating fabrics for the project. My requirements were 1) not cutesy 2) in a dark color and 3) had a pattern repeat less than 24 inches. This was all I could find. I’m not a fan of the color red so I spent a long time looking for something anything else… but I eventually settled on this.  I’m actually really happy with the fabric now, it’s grown on me.

My purse handles are edged with bias tape. This was not part of the pattern instructions. The pattern instructions did say to line two timtex handles up back-to-back and perfect the shape so that each pair of handles was exactly matching. I was not as meticulous about this step as I should have been. After I ironed fabric to the handles with fusible interfacing I realized that my handles are not at all the same shape. Even being just a millimeter off makes a big difference. When the pattern says perfect, it means perfect.

Also, fusible interfacing and me just do not get along. Even if my handles had been the perfect shape, I did a really bad job of folding the fabric around the handles and fusing it to the backside (or inside) of the handles. The edges of my handles were a mess, already starting to fray, and had globs of fusible interfacing melted all over.

I had two options:  I could start over and try to make new, better handles.  Or I could try to cover up my mistakes with bias tape. This was a tough call, since after 8+ years of sewing a lot I have never been able to use fusible interfacing or bias tape properly.  I opted for the bias tape since it seemed more likely to yield a durable end-product and you can rip out and re-sew bias tape if you make a mistakes. There is really no undoing and redoing mistakes with fusible interfacing. I made a lot of mistakes with the bias tape. Like 2 hours worth of mistakes. But I eventually got it right.

I finally have a yarn swift! I couldn’t bring myself to pay $60+ for a fancy schmancy umbrella yarn swift so I made do without one. Then I found a great Instructables tutorial for making a yarn swift. My husband made this one for about $18. It rocks. I wound every hank of yarn I own into a center pull ball last weekend.

Action shot. Whee!

I went to Peru this summer and all I came back with were these balls of yarn:

Ok, that’s not really all I came back with. I came back with a ton of pictures, great memories, an Inca Cola tshirt and possibly the swine flu. But this is all the yarn I came back with. It was surprisingly hard to find yarn in Peru. I ended up finding these yarns at the Pisac market at the very beginning of our two week trip. I thought surely if I am finding yarn this early on in the trip, I will find even more of it later. Wrong-o! This was it. Oh well. Really this is all I needed – some sport weight yarn for mittens and some lace weight yarn for a scarf or shawl.

Look what I’ve been working on:

Yarn : Tahki Yarns Cotton Classic

Pattern : Hexacomb Cardigan, Interweave Knits Spring 2008

I’ve been working on this f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I really don’t like purling because it takes me 4 times longer to purl than it does to knit. For that reason I really do not enjoy working on sweaters that are not knit in the round. But I really enjoy wearing cardigans. So I am slowly, slowly working on this cardigan.

I signed up for the Stash and Burn Single Skein September ravelry group, fully intending to knit up 3 hats, 2 pairs of mittens, 3 scarves and a bunch of socks. I had a 2-week trip to India lined up (for work) and I thought I would be knitting through the 24 hour flight, the 1 hour commute each way to work every day, a weekend roadtrip, plus in the evenings at the hotel.

Here is the grand total of my knitting during the trip:

The top bit of a Foliage hat.

And the start of a strangling vines scarf.

The only knitting I did was on the flight to India. Once I got to India I spent every waking moment at work, shopping or sight-seeing with coworkers, or at the hotel sick. Road and traffic conditions in Bangalore (paired with my tendency to get car sick) were not conducive to knitting while commuting. I had a fantastic trip though, despite being sick and the lack of knitting. It was really productive work-wise, I got to know my coworkers better, see some amazing temples and palaces and eat some great Indian food. And I shopped. A lot. I hope I get to go back next year.

So, my new plan is to knit up just one single skein during the month of September. I think I can manage to finish the Foliage hat by the end of the month.

Canning season is here again. This year I made the same two batches of peach jam as last year: peach lavender and peach, pear, lime. Both turned out great. I chopped the fruit into much smaller bits than last year so it’s much less lumpy and spreads better on bread. I also made two new jams: strawberry margarita jam and kiwi daiquiri. Both are fantastic. The kiwi jam is super, super easy and the strawberry jam, although a lot of chopping, is so delicious that it’s worth the work.

I also canned grape juice for the first time. I sprinkled some fertilizer around the grape vines this spring, and boy, it paid off. There are so many grapes in our garden. I canned 7 pints of grape juice, plus had a pitcher of fresh juice in the fridge. And that was maybe 1/4 of the grapes on the vines. I don’t have enough quart canning jars to make another batch of grape juice, I think I will have to invest in more.