Finally recovered from the flu

The last week has been the Week of Illness in my house. The littlest came down with ickiness on Sunday, and the rest of us got it on Tuesday. Not fun!!!

So not much knitting (or anything else except laundry!) got done during the last week. I did manage to start and finish an Odessa hat and a Vintage Bubble Bag from the Pursenalities book.


The bag is shown pre-felted, and it's significantly smaller now. I put it through the washer (in a zippered pillow case) twice, and could probably have stopped a little ways into the second run. The black yarn, which I got for $1 a ball on sale at Porter's in Idaho Falls, felted amazingly quickly. It also bled a little which is not a big deal. The red-plum yarn is Reynold's Odyssey and it's a beautiful yarn. Despite being 100% merino it will not felt. It's absolutely fine in this project though! Once it's dry I'll take some pictures of it.

I got the Odyssey for half off at the LYS, which made it $9.50, and three balls of black yarn at $1 a ball, so $12.50 for this bag was a good thing. It's not going to be my favorite bag because it's smaller than I'd hoped, but that's all right--it was still a fun knit! I think next time I'll branch out on my own as far as a pattern goes. This one has some funny things going on at the bottom, and I think making a shaped bottom piece, then picking up stitches along the sides would be more successful. Next time!

The Odessa hat is Caron's Simply Soft yarn. I have such a hard time finding soft yarns that can be machine washed and dried that I like. I'm not a big Red Heart fan, and the more I knit the more I gravitate toward wool and natural fibers. This hat is very soft though. It's also going to be very warm. It'll be donated through the Yahoo group Caps for a Cure, and I hope to get another finished to send along with it.

The Tulsa State Fair starts on Thursday and I think I'm going to have to drag my family over there that night to see if any of my stuff got ribbons. I'm so bad about that! The fair doesn't start until 4:00 the first day. I might wait until Friday and drag just DS and my very good friend Rori over there. The problem is that it's $8 to get in, and I want to go when I can LOOK at all the neat stuff! And there is a lot of neat stuff if the sampling I saw when I turned in my stuff is any indication. Gotta be patient. Hmm, I'll have to start a new project or two to distract myself....