Another Jen Bag

This is the second of the set of 5 I am working on for Bridesmaid gifts for a customer.

Handles has handles

I posted back in February about this wool I got at a local woolen mill and asked for ideas for handles.

Laura suggested wooden handles. Well, I finally bought some wooden handles and made it into a bag.

I really like the look of the wood and wool together.  Plus, the round handles and squareness of the bag seem to work well together.  I had a really hard time deciding how to attach the handles and tried a different method first.  I should have taken pictures of it that way - it looked horrible!  This second approach worked much better.  I didn't put in any pockets, though, and I wish I would have because stuff just gets lost inside of it!  I can't decide if I want to keep it for myself, put it up for sale in my Etsy shop, or just give it away.  I'll just have to think about it for a while, I guess.

Tie Blanket

I was shopping at the fabric store this weekend and saw that fleece was 50% off.  I had been wanting to make a new tie blanket that matched the living room, since the Nebraska Husker tie blanket is now in our downstairs rec room, so I just couldn't resist!

Remember the Jen bag?

I previously posted about the Jen bag: 

 and 

Well, someone contacted me through Etsy and asked me to make 5 of them for her bridesmaid gifts.  I am really excited about it!  We have picked out the fabric for all of them, and here is the first one!

 I am a little bit in love with this one.  Now I want to make one for myself!  It has a zipper pocket and patch pocket inside and closes with a magnetic snap.

And, I now have logo tags:

I got these on Etsy from Priya Creations.  I feel so professional!

Dishcloth 8 of 26

8) Cluster rib:

I really love using cotton for these swatches so that I can use them as dishcloths, and in general, I am a big fan of cotton, but it just isn't as nice to knit with as wool or even acrylic.  Cotton doesn't have the stretch and give that other fibers do, so I have to be careful to knit loosely or else I get frustrated, especially when trying to slip stitches over others.

Hand spun and hand dyed

This is my first batch of yarn spun on my new drop spindle.  The drop spindle is a little easier for learning to spin because it is slower than the wheel.  I have more time to concentrate on drafting consistently.  I am still not great at being consistent, but I think I'm getting better.

This is also my first batch of dying yarn.  I just used food coloring and used a combination of yarn dying techniques that I have read about in books, including this one, and the directions on the food coloring box.  I figured that wool is a protein fiber and egg shells are protein, so food coloring should work on wool if it works on eggs.  I heated a couple cups of water to just barely a simmer and added vinegar and food coloring as specified on the box.  I used 65 drops of blue and 15 of red.  The water looked really blue so I expected the yarn to be more close to indigo than purple, but I still like how it turned out.  I was surprised to see how differently some parts of the  yarn took the dye.  I am excited to knit something with it to see how it looks knit up!

A morning of mending

A few weeks ago I had a really productive morning mending clothes.

I re-sewed seams in 2 pairs of pants, patched a pair of jeans, sewed buttons on 2 shirts, fixed the hem in a pair of dress pants, and fixed a seam in a shirt!  I can't believe I waited so long to take care of these!

Mending clothes isn't that exciting, but I did learn how to use the blind hem feature on my sewing machine for the dress pants, so at least I learned something in the process.