Ooh...

Ahh...

Lovely, lovely yarn mail...such a happy thing!!

Having the Noni patterns in hand let me know what yarn was required, so I ordered a bunch. I had to order from two places to get the colors I wanted: Webs and Alpaca Direct. But, both places had the yarn on *sale*! And it arrived within two days too!

I have already wound 11 of the skeins into balls. I will be able to make up to 3 market bags and 2 evening bags and flowers for all. The only thing I still need to buy is the Crystal Palace Fizz in black. It's part of the flowers for the evening bags. I was going to order it, but shipping was going to cost more than the 1 ball I need, so I'm holding off for awhile. Maybe I can incorporate it into a bigger order or find it locally. I have plenty of knitting I can do in the meantime.

After the mail arrived on Saturday, I went to JoAnn's to get some supplies. I'd made a list of things I wanted all week and was able to get most things. Mainly I wanted the stuff for finishing the tan Chunky Cable Bag.

I picked out these two patterns and will look for fabric I like another day.

There were some good sales at JoAnn's too!

Don't worry, I didn't stay inside all weekend. It was gorgeous out and I did a lot of yard work (my arms ache from clipping). For fun, we fired up the grill for lunch and dinner today! Yay!

One Night's Work

I guess I really want to get the Noni bag done, 'cos I stayed up extremely late last night working on it! I don't really know what I'm doing, so hopefully I won't have to rip anything out that I've done so far.

First, I got out my "new" sewing machine for the machine sewing parts. Heh heh. If this is my new sewing machine you are really wondering what my "old" one looks like. Yes, it may actually be considered an antique. They might not have all the bells and whistles and computers of the ones in the shops, but they do *work* and that's enough for me at this point. This one's older than me and I've sewed on it since I was a kid. I did a lot of sewing then and hardly any recently, but I'd like to do more again.

It does have it's own table it drops into, but I kind of like working on the dining room table, so Jeff hauled it downstairs for me. I'll be sure to take a picture of my other sewing machine for you at some point.

I got to work on finishing the Noni bag by sewing some grosgrain ribbon together lengthwise (on the machine) and then hand sewed it into the bag for the handles. I attached it all the way around the bag for durability, following the lead of some other bloggers like Z Knits and Wendy Knits. You can see both ribbons stitched down in this picture:
I can't resist including a close up of my tiny, relatively neat stitches!
Next, I sewed in the zipper, trying my best to even up the edges of the opening and keep the stripes lined up.
I put the handles on just for fun at this point to see how they look. I'll have to remove them for working on the bag more. The next step is to cut and stitch in the reinforcing layer. After that, I have to cut out and sew the fabric lining and attach it.
The only thing I didn't buy for this that I'm wondering if I'll want are feet. I guess I have to make my mind up soon as it will be too late to put them in after awhile. I'm leaning toward *not* having feet. Any thoughts on that?