Raincoat Bag

A few weeks ago I was at Dressew (Vancouver's discount sewing mecca) and found a 2 meter piece of teal raincoat fabric on sale for $1.99.  At the time, we were in the middle of several weeks of grey, rainy weather, and the teal vinyl seemed like the perfect thing from which to make a bag...

Several weeks (and a few trips to other local fabric shop later, here it is!  :)

 Here's a shot of the inside - complete with an internal zippered pocket, a custom-sized cell phone pocket, and magnetic closures.  (please don't look too closely at the stitching - I make no claims at having sewing skills beyond those I learned in grade 8 Home Ec!)

There are dozens of tote bag tutorials out there if you want to make one of your own - my  bag is based on this tutorial from a blog called The Longest Year, as well as this zippered pocket tutorial.  The whole thing cost me about $20 - the hardest part of it was fighting with my sewing machine, which kept eating the vinyl (put some lightweight paper between the vinyl and the machine for easier sewing) and can't hold its tension to save its life.

Of course, now that the bag is finished and ready to brave the rain, the weather gods have decided to bring us a week of sunny weather!   But when it comes back, I'll be ready!  :)

In other news, Darcy and I headed out to Fibres West in Abbotsford today to partake of some fibrey goodness.  It was less fibre-festival, and more shopping-oriented than I was expecting (there were no sheepies, alas!), but it was still a great opportunity to be able to see (and fondle, and buy!) so many locally produced yarns all in one place.  I willingly fell of my yarn-diet to buy these little lovelies:

This is 2-ply Organic Merino from West Coast Fibre Works, in the SaltSpring colourway.  This one called out to me, leaped into my hands, and then insisted on coming home with me!

And then I found these guys...

Well, to be honest, I found one of them, and then a very lovely knitter who was holding on to the other one decided that I needed it more than she did, so she gave it to me and bought something else instead.  I didn't catch your name, but thank you whoever you were!  :)

And now to go decide what these guys want to become...

Yarn Soup

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but this year I decided to take part in the yarn diet and stashdown challenges that are being hosted by the Pre-Process Knitters Ravelry Group.  The goal of these challenges is pretty obvious - stop buying yarn, and work your hardest to knit up as much of your yarn stash as physically possible over the course of the year.

These challenges are becoming difficult.  Even though I didn't really buy all that much yarn before (although you'd never know it by looking at my stash!!), the fact that I can't buy yarn makes me feel a little deprived.  There have even been a few moments when I have pictured myself walking into a yarn store and falling off the diet wagon in a very disastrous fashion - only problem is, I haven't the faintest idea what yarn I'd actually want to buy!

(My friend Al here says its all relative, although I'm not really sure what he means by that)

Anyway, for the time being, I seem to have found a solution:

From now on whenever I feel like I really need to buy yarn, I'm just going to frog one of the many sweaters (and other projects) that I've knit, but never wear/use.  Or, in the case of this particular yarn, a sweater for which I knit all the pieces, but then neglected to seam up because the sleeves grew several inches during the blocking process!

Knitting from my stash

I've been thinking about it, and I think its time I go on a yarn diet... As it is, I currently have enough yarn for 4 sweaters, about 2 pairs of socks, a cabled purse, and several other random projects, all just sitting there waiting to be knit up... and then there's all that yarn in my stash box... including three Handmaiden projects from mom, which really should not have been allowed to make it into the box in the first place, but I was madly cleaning the house one day in anticipation of house guests, and therefore just whisked everything downstairs and into the box...

Anyway, in order to stay on this yarn diet, I have decided to join Wendy's 2007 Knit from your stash-athon... if you want to join too, you can go see the rules that Wendy created, and then do what I'm doing, and alter them to suit your situation. These are my rules...

1) My stash-busting process is starting now, and will continue until September 30th, 2007... roughly nine months, and ending in time for next year's Xmas knitting...

2) I will not buy any yarn during this period, with the following exceptions:

a) I am allowed to buy yarn as gifts for other people, for Secret Pals, and any other swaps that I may decide to join in the next few months

b) I am allowed to buy yarn to make into gifts for other people, but these must be really well researched projects, so that I buy exactly enough yarn for the project, and don't end up changing my mind on which project to make, thereby creating a need to purchase new yarn while the other stuff ends up in my stash. These projects must also have hard and fast deadlines so the projects don't get to marinate and then breed in my stash. (I also get bonus points for using stash yarn to make gifts!)

c) I get one 'get out of jail free' card. This is already reserved though, because of recent discussions among my Newcastle friends about taking a road trip to visit certain yarn shops... so I will have to be very careful about not using this indiscriminately....

d) if absolutely necessary, I'm allowed to buy yarn to finish a project. but only if I really really need an extra skein or something. Deciding that I don't like the way a yarn knits up into its pre-determined project does not mean that I get to go buy new yarn for that project - I just have to pick a new project. (Mike seconds this one!)

3) Trading stash is allowed. Of course this will require me to catalogue my stash, since most of it will be back here in Ottawa, so I really don't remember what's in there... so this option might be more difficult than I thought.

4) I'm allowed to receive gifts of yarn

5) Knitting books and magazines are also included in this diet - I'm only allowed to buy Interweave Knits and/or Vogue Knitting... I already have a long list of appealing projects in my current selection of knitting books and magazines - I'm sure I can find enough inspiration in here to get me through the next few months, should I happen to have extra yarn that needs a destiny...

K, I think that's all... but I reserve the right to add more rules (but no exceptions) in case I need more discipline! :)