Rustic Market Bag

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. We continue to get a good amount of rain so things are really green around here right now. I love it! 

It was a really productive week for me. My favorite project was a Rustic Market Bag designed by Camilla N. Skjoenhaug:

Rustic Market Bag

This pattern is available for free on Camilla's blog, but I paid the $1 to get the ad-free PDF version. It's a great pattern and worth much more than $1! To try to support the designer, I looked at her other patterns but everything I liked was also free so I'll just take this as a gift. I really like the size and shape of this bag. And it has a pretty flower motif on the bottom, making it a more interesting crochet:

Rustic Market Bag bottom

It was easy to crochet, but it took me a couple of tries to figure out some of the instructions. But I think that comes from my inexperience and it would be really straightforward for a more experienced crocheter. The pattern has some wonderful picture tutorials to help you along. I'm sure I'll be making more of these bags! This one will probably end up as a birthday gift for a friend of mine.

After finishing the market bag, I was looking for another crochet project to start. I found a couple of other fancy market bags that I think I'd like to try, but they use fingering weight yarn and I don't have any of that in cotton or acrylic, which are the best yarns for market bags. So I ordered some yarn, and in the meantime I looked for another crochet project that I could make out of the acrylic yarn that I've been using up. I found the Knit-Look Ribbed Hat designed by Amy Depew:

Knit-Look Ribbed Hat

This was another free pattern (there are a LOT of free crochet patterns out there). This was another really easy pattern to crochet. Without ribbing on the brim, I was afraid that this hat wouldn't stay on my head. I was happily surprised with the final product. It's really comfortable on my head and feels like it will stay on just fine!

Once I finished the hat, I continued to search through market bag patterns using worsted weight yarn (the weight of the acrylic yarn I'm using). I found the Gardenia Market Tote designed by Alexandra Tavel:

Gardenia Market Tote progress

This tote has a different construction from the others I've made. The others were crocheted in the round, starting at the bottom. This one is crocheted flat, then the sides are connected (I'll figure out how when I get to that part of the instructions). It has a pretty flower motif integrated in the fabric:

Gardenia Market Tote motif close-up

This motif is a little bit challenging because at one point you have 17 loops on your hook and have to pull your working yarn through all of them. Sometimes it's smooth, other times the hook gets caught and I have to unravel things and start the stitch over again. It's getting easier with time as I figure out where to pull on the work when pulling the hook through to be least likely to catch on any of the yarn. This motif uses a lot of yarn so I'm not sure if I'll have enough of this color to finish the bag. Depending on where I run out, I'll either finish the bag with another color or order more yarn. This is a commercial yarn so it shouldn't be very noticeable if I finish with yarn that was dyed in a different lot.

On the knitting side, I was able to finish my Kerchief-errific cowl designed by Amy Gunderson:

Kerchief-errific

Kerchief-errific side view

This was another old Jimmy Beans Wool club project that I had in my stash. I think it turned out really nice. The yarn is really soft and the shape is perfect to cover your neck and the opening in your coat. The yarn is a cotton yarn with colored acrylic bits woven in to give it color, so it would also be perfect for making market bags......

I also resurrected another knitting project. I organized another space in my house and I ran across my Rock & Roll Scarf also designed by Amy Gunderson:

Rock & Roll Scarf

This was another old Jimmy Beans Wool club project. I knew I was close to finishing this project (Ravelry allows me to keep track of all of my projects, along with pictures), but couldn't remember what was holding it up. It turned out that it just needed to have the fringe added to the ends. That had stymied me at the time because there wasn't enough of the gray yarn left for the fringe since the grey yarn was used for one more repeat than the rest of the colors. I ended up cutting as much of the gray fringe as I could get out of the remainder and divided that as evenly as possible in the correct locations on the scarf. I then filled in the red and gold fringe. I put in fewer of the red and gold fringes than called for in the pattern, but it was enough to make the fringe look good and not draw attention to the thinner gray fringe. I think it turned out well! I blocked the scarf before trimming the fringe to make sure that blocking wouldn't affect the fringe shape. Being a quilter, I could easily cut all of the fringe to the same length using a ruler and my rotary cutter. It's fun when tools from one craft help with another craft!

My last knitting project is progress on my Prismatic Poncho:

Prismatic Poncho progress

This is another old Jimmy Beans Wool club project. I'll continue to plug away at this project until it's completed. It's a fun knit because of the bright colors and the soft yarn, but it gets tedious because the stitches aren't interesting and you constantly have to juggle three little skeins of yarn while you knit.

Finally, I did a small amount of sewing this week. One of my quilt guilds has an initiative where we are making block for Quilts of Valor quilts. Quilts of Valor is a national program that makes quilts for veterans. I picked up a couple of the block kits and sewed a couple of blocks that I will return at the next meeting:

Quilts of Valor blocks

It was fun to get back to my sewing machine. I have a lot more organization to do before I can work on any big sewing projects, but I can do small things like this. I wish organizing was as fun as crafting!

Well, that's all for now. I hope everyone is having a great week!

Nancy