Crafts - A custom made bag

It started out with a simple stripes crochet bag I made for myself as a bag to use for going to concerts, etc. to store just the basics - wallet, keys, phone. My mother was taken with it as she said it would complement one of her favorite short pullovers. As it sometimes happens the idea to make another bag for my Mom for Mother's Day immediately came to my mind. I asked my Dad to take pics of the pullover so I could match the colors (to cut the long story short, I didn't completely succeed but it didn't matter).

I'm doubly proud and super-happy with how this bag turned out as it included a couple of "firsts" for me:

• Crocheting a chevron pattern
• Using felt pieces
• Punching holes in fabric and making them pretty with proper eyelets
• Sewing other than "normal" fabrics on my sewing machine

As usual I went to consult the ladies at my favorite yarn store (Wedermann) about the choice of possible yarns. I ended up with a silver shining variant of Lana Grossa Lace Lux which I already had stashed and used for my Mandalay lace scarf, a light grey Lana Grossa Wakame and a black Lana Grossa Organico.

The crocheting itself went pretty fast and was easy once you understand the principle of decrease/increase around the wave pattern so it ends up a straight piece of work. The assembly of all pieces and finalization was great as I love working with different tools - making things from scratch is FUN!

Here are a few pictures of the result - what do you think?

Crafts - My love-hate pixie coat

I've learned to knit, sew and crochet when I was in the single-digit area age-wise and I've been working on things on and off for some time. The big passion for those things came when I was pregnant and started making things for my kids. If you have an account over at Ravelry you can check out my my profile and a few things I have made over time.
So... there are some knitting communities over on Facebook, too, and seeing what was a relatively simple description for something along the lines of a Pixie Coat I decided to make one for myself. Being a half-goth with the favorite colors of black, dark gray and purple (blog colors, anyone?) I went to hunt for the appropriate yarns. I ended up at one of my favorite yarn stores, Wedermann, with the helpful ladies there suggesting I use fiber normally used for knitting machines, two strands of each color:

 

So far so good, I love the color combination and after some mistakes on the way which made me unravel a third of my work and not look at the coat for a few weeks out of frustration it's nearing its completion! I need to decide on which kind of fastening/closing mechanism to use - zip? Buttons? Some kind of clasps? We'll see - I'll keep you posted and will put up pics of the finished thing as soon as I can.