Gardenia Market Tote Finished

 Hi all -

Wow! Another week has passed so quickly!! We continue to have a lot of rain up here. My well is very happy! This week I concentrated on just a couple of projects, and finished them both.

First, I finished my Gardenia Market Tote designed by Alexandra Tavel:

Gardenia Market Tote

Gardenia Market Tote

I ran out of yarn before finishing this bag, but I found more of the yarn on Amazon so was able to order more and get it quickly. Since this is a commercial manufacturer, I didn't worry too much about the colors not matching from different dye lots and, indeed, you can't see a difference between the yarns. I love this bag! It's not practical as a shopping bag because it's made out of a lot of yarn so is a bit heavier and takes up more space than most market totes. But it's really pretty, feels soft and luscious, and can hold a lot. I think it will be a good beach bag, project bag or general tote bag. I followed the pattern as it is written (or as best I can since I still get confused about end-of-round instructions), except that I added an extra round for the handles to make them a little wider. 

My other project was a new knitting project. I was reading a forum for a designer that I like and someone posted something about the Terra Shawl. That reminded me that I was planning on making this shawl sometime for my niece, Terra. I decided that now was a good time to do that. Here's where I can demonstrate some of the wonderful features of the Ravelry web site (ravelry.com). I had purchased the pattern from the Ravelry web site a while ago so I was able to search for the pattern in my library and download it to my iPad for use in my knitCompanion knitting software. On the pattern page in Ravelry, they produce a link to a page where they have searched all of the projects that other people have made from this pattern and compared the yarn that they used to the yarns that I have in my stash (I add new yarn to my stash in Ravelry when I get it). So I could look at pictures of other projects that people made with the yarns that I already have to see if I like how the pattern works up in those yarns. That page also shows how much I have of each color of each yarn, with the ones where I have enough for the project highlighted. From that page, I could click on the yarn that I decided I wanted to use and the stash page for that yarn includes a note about where I have the yarn stored so I could immediately find the yarn and start the project. I think that's incredibly cool! And, to top it off, the Web site is free and there is just a little discrete advertising that doesn't get in the way of the usefulness of the site. I really love it! And here is my finished Terra Shawl designed by Joji Locatelli:

Terra Shawl

I still need to block the shawl to get it to its appropriate size and to open up the lace. The pattern was really easy, but I found that I definitely needed life lines because it was really easy for me to forget the increases. I had missed the increases at some point on my first start and ended up ripping everything out and starting over because that felt like it would be quicker than trying to find and fix my mistake. On the second try with the lifelines, I somehow added a stitch in my knitting but was able to just rip back to the life line and start again from there. Even with all of that, the shawl knit up quickly!

That's all for this week. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy