Busy Needles

It's been a while since I posted some craft... I have been busy with the knitting and crochet and have been avoiding the computer a bit. I've been mostly crocheting. This Curly Scarf was made for Elisha as a birthday gift. It looks lovely on her. I really loved making this one as it was so easy to carry around and the pattern is quite easy so I could just crochet without having to refer to the pattern too often. It only took me three night time TV sessions.

This crochet/ sewn bag has been on the craft table for a while now. I LOVE the wool I used. It was so chunky and looks really great. It's a blend of wool and alpaca, it's a bit scratchy for a nice scarf so I thought it would be great for this bag from one of my Japanese books.

I made some braids for the handles and sewed them onto interfaced strips of material for strength. The lining was made out of a nice stripey cotton and interfaced with a heavy weight interfacing to give the bag some shape.

I did make one silly mistake. I should have joined the crochet base with the top front and then attached the lining and handles. I got a bit carried away and attached the handles and lining to the top front first and then I couldn't use the sewing machine to attach the base! I couldn't bare to unpick the topstitching and risk ruining the good job I had done of attching the handles! So I hand-sewed the base on with big stitches in the hope that it would look like that's how it was supposed to be. It looks ok, next time I'll try and think ahead a bit more. oops. :)

Now I am busy knitting a shrug for my sister-in-law as a birthday present. It's taking up all my spare time, my cleaning time, my cooking time.... the kids are waiting longer for everything these days too! I should be finished over the weekend. Then I can start on some of the groovy hats in the japanese book Jade lent me.