Knitting Progress, Booga Bags Questions & Crafty News

I was able to make some more progress on the gift for my nephews yesterday. I may actually finish before Christmas ... ha ha! I finished two squares and started another. So now only four and a half squares to go. And then the task of weaving in about 500 ends ... ugh! It's gonna be so cool though. I'm excited about it. I hope they love it and play with it for years. And one of the best things about it is that I can add to it later on to make it more challenging. (This will all make sense once I finish it and tell you what it is.)

I've received quite a few comments and emails about the Booga Bags. Yes, they are awesome, I know ... which is why I wanted to knit one. Which turned into two. Which will soon be three. And also what got me thinking .... and the thinking evolved into a project idea ... like I need more stuff to do, right? LOL! Let me first say, anyone who wants one ... I will be happy to knit one for you if you send me the yarn. So everyone who has asked me that, three so far I think, send me an email and we can talk about the yarn. The kureyon is pretty expensive but there are plenty of other feltable yarns that I can use. The blue one I made was a different yarn and it turned out great. I can do stripes or solid colors ... whatever you want. I love knitting them because they are what I call "mindless knitting" which means I can get them done quickly and can work on them while sitting with the kids. It's knit in the round so I just keep knitting and knitting and knitting without having to think about it much. And since it's a bag, it even holds the yarn for me once I get the bottom done. So no ball of yarn hanging around for Brody to grab onto. I was knitting one in a restaraunt recently and a woman came up to me and said "hey ... you're knitting the bag and using it too". She thought it was funny.

Crafty News, part 1: So back to the idea part. Ya'll know I love to dye stuff, right? And that I love to knit, right? And that i've been working on combining my two loves into dyeing yarn, right? Now you also know that I love bags, right? And do you know that i've always wanted to write a book and have worked on several ideas in the past? Well my recent Booga Bag knitting gave me an idea to combine all of these things. I'm designing my own bags all the way from the yarn dyeing to the knitting pattern. My idea is to design a yarn and bag with a person in my life in mind. Then combine them into a book of patterns. Now I know there are tons of books like this out there and that it will probably never get published. But ya know what? That's okay. If all I ever do is have some bound so I can give them out as gifts to my knitting friends then i've accomplished what I wanted to. I'm giving myself a year to complete this project. I want twelve bags so that's one bag per month. I don't have a lot of spare time on my hands right now but the boys are getting bigger and much more independent. It won't be long before I can send them both out into the back yard to play while I sit on the porch and work on my designs.

Crafty News, part 2: I'm starting an Etsy shop. If you don't know about Etsy, you should. It's an online marketplace for handmade goods ... as they say. You see, I decided after the last craft fair that I did ... that I wasn't going to do them anymore until the boys were older. It just wasn't fitting well for various reasons that I won't bore you with. So I decided to start getting rid of all the craft fair stuff I have. Well luckily I had not gotten rid of too much before I found out about Etsy. I'm going to list some of my better tie-dyed items as well as baby slings (i'm sold out now so those will be a little while) and my hand-dyed yarn. I'm also going to sell kits that contain the yarn and pattern for my bags, as I design them. Fun, no? Not like I need extra things to take up my time but part of the whole premise in moving here was that I got to take my life in a new direction. I wanted to be an aerospace engineer since I was about eight years old. I also have loved all things crafty since that time as well. The first doesn't leave much time for the second. Moving here allowed me to change direction and explore my crafty side instead of my technical side. And Brett has stood behind me 100% with all of it. Well okay, the technical side seems to follow me wherever I go. I never thought I would find myself still working as an engineer but from the comfort of my own home, as well as tutoring math ... also from the comfort of my own home. But hey, it pays the bills. And I still manage to find some crafty time. And believe it or not, there is definitely a technical side to the crafty things I take on. The chemistry of dyeing, for example, as well as the math involved in knitting patterns.

So the grand plan is to open a craft shop with a classroom area so I can teach and sell crafty stuff but that's in the long-term planning. One good thing about Lake City is that there is plenty of room for new ventures to pop up. And hey ... we're getting a Starbucks so people actually know we exist! Hee hee. Oh yeah, and don't even think about stealing my idea ... because that's just not cool. Well if you don't live in Lake City then steal away ...

Back to the bags idea for a moment ...
My first bag was the one I posted on sunday. I dyed the yarn with Miss Nancy in mind, hence the colorway "red nancy". She loves red so that was a given. There were several things behind that bag design. One being that it had to be quick. A weekend project. Nothing too fancy, just functional and easy to finish. Sort of a getting my foot in the door kind of thing. My thinking when working on that design was that I wanted it to be something to throw a paperback, some sunglasses and a tube of sunscreen in. I was picturing her throwing these things in at the river cabin and walking down to sit on the deck for a leisurely afternoon. It sits open kind of like a basket so it could sit next to her on the deck and be easy to reach into and grab what you want. (it can also double as a basket to sit on the counter and hold things) I would have prefered it to be just a tad bit bigger but I had to felt it down a little more to get it to stand on it's own. I plan to have a bigger version of the same bag in my book. That yarn is nice and thick so it makes a really sturdy bag. I'm looking forward to knitting the larger version and seeing how it turns out. One of the best things about these bags is that i'm giving them away to the person I designed it around once it's done. Exciting, no? I would love to learn how to spin eventually as well so maybe i'll end up with a design that started all the way from roving that I spun, dyed, designed and knit. Now that would be cool!