Not as cute as my nephew, but...

...I can finally show you pictures of my latest FO. This is my mom's Christmas present (you know, because it's only February).


It's a very simple, basic felted bag that I kind of made up as I went. We finished it off today with a thin black drapery cord handle (much like the one on my sheep tote, for those who know it. I have a tendency to prefer drapery cord to I-cord, mostly because I HATE knitting I-cord. I let my mom pick out the cord, for length and design and whatnot). I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

The Greek key design is more or less pilfered from a little booklet I got free with some knitting magazine containing a few teaser patterns from one of Vogue Knitting's little tiny knitting books (possibly Felted Bags Two. Or maybe just Bags Two. Something with a "two"). This pattern was part of an overall motif on the Weekender.

The yarn is Mauch Chunky, out of my stash, nearly three balls' worth. The bottom was black, worked doubled for strength and/or durability, and then after I picked up the stitches around the base I just kind of kept going until I ran out. I had a little bit of each of the blue colors left over. So, you know, it took about that much yardage (great pattern notes, huh?).


And then here's the picture of the bag with my awesome new felting majig. Love that thing, even if (especially because?) Maggie never found it at all interesting.

My mom really liked it. She even made sure she took it to dinner with us tonight to show off to my (actual) aunt and uncle and my younger cousin. My dad wore his socks, too. My uncle was very impressed. Dinner was nice - we went to the Rock Bottom Brewery, which is a chain, but the food was decent and the beer was awesome. I had the Lumpy Dog Brown. Ha!

My older cousin couldn't join us for dinner because his band - the coolest indie rock band ever - is playing in the city tonight. I'm a little bummed that it wasn't a) closer, or b) that they weren't headlining, because I've been dying to go to one of their shows. And they have a new album coming out in a couple of weeks, on which my cousin wrote FOUR of the songs. Wicked.



Dimitri plays bass, and in the pic in the banner he's the one on the right. The handsome one. It runs in the family, obviously.

They so need to come play in NC.

So tomorrow morning I get back on the big blue avion and head back to Carolina. And then pick Mags up, and then I'm on call Monday night. Ahhh, back to reality, and so soon....