A First Experience, Or Two, and Somethin' Blue!

Saturday evening, on the way to dinner at El Charro (I'm pretty sure that's Spanish for "Always Excellent."), we stopped at a certain big store to check out the toy department. I'm not afraid to admit, there have been occasions where I've stood in the Hotwheels aisle and sent Clay back to the front of the store to bring me a shoppin' cart. On this last trip, I took it kinda easy; I ended up with seven little cars in my hand and that was it.

While we were waiting for the person ahead of us to finish up with the "self check-out," the cashier in charge of watching the area caught my attention and offered to check us out at her stand. I'm not kidding, she seriously asked, "are y'all buyin' for the grandkids?"

I didn't know what to say, so I just kinda patted Clay and said "Oh, there are no kids here."

What the hell? I'm thirty-fucking-two. What the hell?

But... I've probably stewed and bitched enough over the weekend, so instead of making this post all ranty/bitchy, lemme show ya somethin' I made!!



That's the "environment friendly grocery bag" that I was workin' on at the Hearse Show -- the knitting that appeared in more pictures than I did. I left it in my chair for a while, and while I was gone, there were several pictures taken of the other people sitting in the chairs near mine.

The first Christmas that I was knitting, almost everybody got a scarf. I've thought about knitting these bags for everybody, but I had a hard time finding a pattern that I really liked. I made a couple bags from a yarn company's pattern; they knitted up pretty quick due to the big needles, but it's hard to sew a decent seam into something that's knitted with such big stitches. I checked out a couple other online patterns, but the one I really liked the looks of required a stitched-on fabric strap; I wanted something that had it's straps or handles knitted on -- I guess I have a thing about continuity.

I finally found a pattern that looked interesting; through that same yarn company, so I gave it a try. It started with a rectangular base and had an interesting lacy pattern that probably would've been pretty cool if I hadn't messed it up so many times. When it came time to knit the handle, I messed up my stitch count again, but where I'd wrecked the lacy pattern, it looked kinda cool.

So that's how I decided to try this... I started with a square instead of a rectangle, and instead of using a four-row pattern of lace, I repeated two rows for diagonals instead of round holes. I also went with stockinette handles instead of continuing the lace pattern.



There it is with a few random pantry items tossed in for the photo. I've yet to actually use any of my knitted bags at a store because they're always occupied with other stuff. I've been carrying my knitting stuff to the library in that messed-up one, one of my others is hangin' on the back of my car seat to catch clutter, and a few others are hangin' around different places with balls of yarn in 'em.

I think I've found a way to knit up some of the cotton in my stash...

;) More later. _\,,/