Ollie Blanket and Felted Tote.

These projects are completely unrelated, but had to throw the felted tote in somewhere. I'll start with the baby blanket, though, since babies are more fun and I'm excited to introduce baby Oliver (Ollie) - Wade & Eve's little one. Meet Oliver (held by daddy)! He's a wee bit bigger now - this pic shows him around 2 months old and he's nearly 6 mos now. Crazy how time flies...

I delivered his baby blanket very late. Don't know how I got so behind with it, but I really liked how it turned out despite all the lateness. Very soft yarn and nice, simple pattern. J'adore the pale yellow edging around the boyish blue. The pattern is for the Hooded Baby Blanket from the Lion Brand site - you have to register to get it, but it's free. I didn't do the hood, but used the pattern for the square blanket, then added a few rows of crocheted shell edging to pretty it up. It turned out rather large, but seemed more appropriate since I didn't get it to them until he was nearly 3 mos old. Yikes. Hopefully he's getting plenty of belly time with it as more of a floor play blanket than a swaddler. :-)

This tote has been years in the making. Seriously. Years. I got the yarn and pattern from Knitch in Atlanta with Danielle ages ago and started on it immediately. The knitting took a long time, since the bag has to be at least twice the size before felting. It was enormous and like a fool, I naturally forgot to take a pic before throwing it in the machine. I knitted the first half within the first few months, then let a few other projects jump in, and before I knew it I had only handles to go for a year. Then, finished a handle and another year goes by with one handle to go. Finally, the week before heading to Renegade with Danielle this year (in May), I gave myself a good kick in the arse. It was ridiculous really. I just sat down, took about 20 minutes to finish the other strap, then threw it in the washing machine. In hindsight, I think I was really nervous about the felting - terrified that all that pretty yarn and all that knitting would be going down the drain as I somehow screwed up the final stage. Well, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Put in a just a touch of mild/natural soap and HOT water, then just keep agitating and don't let it drain until you can see that it's either the size you want it or not shrinking anymore - then you're done. I had one little mishap when I was running around doing something else and heard the machine start spinning the water out. Aagh! I ran in and stopped it, but basically had to refill the water and keep going - no real biggie, but a pain and waste of water. My machine doesn't have a convenient cycle for felting - obviously not designed by a crafty lady.

I couldn't be happier with the finished product. I LOVE my bag. It's not often that I start (much less finish) a project for myself, so it was really fun to finish this bag and take it to Austin to show it off a bit. This is the pattern for the bag and the yarn is from Cascade Yarns - not sure Knitch carries it anymore - the orange colorway is called burnt orange, but has some little speckles of color mixed in - the blue matches one of the color specks, but they don't show up so much with the felting. No matter, though, I still love the colors together. The first pic is of the drying/blocking process - the size wasn't a concern, so I just stuffed it with a ton of plastic grocery bags to shape it a little. It took a couple days to fully dry and I kept it in a room underneath a ceiling fan and turned it over a couple times a day.

In a perfect world, I would use the nearly full skein of orange yarn I have left to knit two large rectangles, then felt and sew them into a zipper pouch. I do have this plan, but it's not even on the official project list at the moment. Ang and I need to make make up some new project lists at our next craft night to focus ourselves. She's about to have a baby, so may not really have a list of projects for a while, but it'll be fun to think about anyway.