Quick and Easy?

Hello. Is it HOT where you are? Sure is here. So ironic that my handwork of choice these days mostly involves working with wool.

I am caught up with knitting the clues of the Summer Mystery Shawlette and look forward to finishing it up when Wendy posts that final clue today. This has been a FUN and enjoyable project.

Tuesday I arrived home from work to see a little treat hanging on my doorknob. This signals that Kay has made a surprise visit. It seems in one of her rounds she ran upon some fabric that screamed my name.

When I first pulled it out, I only saw the skeleton. Since I don't generally sport skeleton themes, I was initially puzzled. But then I unfolded it, had a closer look, and burst into laughter. [Kay has a way of initiating this response. smile]

This is from a now-discontinued Michael Miller line. At this size, you can't read the title of the book dropped from the poor knitter's hand, but it is Quick and Easy Knitting Projects. I think we've all had a couple of those projects that make us wonder if we'll outlast them! There is also a dog chewing up knitting, a cat making free with a skein of yarn, and a sullen child dressed head to toe in handknits. Too, too funny.

Well of course I needed to make it into a bag and the sooner the better. I ended up using this free pattern which turned out to be super fast and requires only a tiny bit of handwork to sew up a few inches of the lining.

This pattern works best with non-directional prints and this was certainly not that so I cut and pieced my rectangle before beginning so that the designs would be correct on both sides. Because of this I also made mine just a tad smaller (15" x 38", I think) and it came out just fine. In fact, I'm not sure I'd like it much bigger.

As soon as I hit publish on this post, I'm plugging the fan in and pointing it right at the sewing machine and starting another.

Hope you have an engaging project you can do inside in the cool.

[oh, and if you do decide to make this yourself, you might watch the video demo which I found very helpful.]