Totes Awesome

These last few months have been rough. Capital-r, o, u, g, h, rough. And to make it all better by mom flew out last week to spend a whole week with me. We had fun, we cooked, (she) we cleaned.

I've been wanting to make a trompe l'oeil tote bag for a while and I got those Stained fabric markers from Sharpie a long time ago for that very purpose. Mom got the first one.

I used Megan Nielsen's instructions and a sturdy canvas, added a lining of quilting cotton, and used store-bought woven straps. The markers worked really well and everything you see here has already been washed once so the markers are resisting fading in the wash. My inspiration (blantant steal) was this. Love you momma!

Pattern Review: Riverbed Shawl

There was nothing better to follow up my enormous, never-ending previous knitting project than with a shawl that took me two days to knit. Two glorious wonderful days.

The shawl is one of my diy Christmas presents and is going to my lovely future mother-in-law. My boyfriend's contribution was picking out the colors and they are very beautiful colors.

The pattern is from Twinkle's Weekend Knits which has the best bulky yarn patterns. I LOVE Twinkle! I used Blue Sky Bulky yarn which is soft and fluffy and yummylicious. My two yarn loves are Noro and Blue Sky, they are the best stuff. The pattern calls for 9 stripes, but I only made 7 to reduce some bulkiness in the width which was perfect. I also reduced the 13" (!) fringe down to 7", wayyy more manageable. I've never put fringe on anything, it was quite fun!

What a pretty project, I hope she loves it!

Now here's the shitty part. I was so anxious to get this in the mail that there's only one picture and it was only discovered serendipitously on my boyfriend's phone.

...yeah.