Corntastic!

When Regina took me on my first foray to A Mano I was immediately enchanted with the corn yarn. I mean, its freakin corn. And its soft. And dude, its made 100% from corn. Seriously. Corn. How do you not fall for that.

As I discussed in my last post, don't put the yarn near a hot iron but other than that it was interesting to work with. Its a ribbon yarn texture but oddly sturdy...about wool strong but not cotton strong. I just finished a second project with it and it also has a nice drape. It was that soft drape that initially attracted me to it but knowing that Todd's mom would never wear a knitted cardigan or shell I set out to make a bag. After much discussion with Regina, it was determined that crochet would give this yarn the strength it needed to become a fabulous little bag.

The bag was pretty free form so I have no pattern to post other than I worked with an F crochet hook, with 10 rows composing each stripe. I think I cast on about 180 stitches and worked in the round from there. What you don't see are two belt loops on the back of the bag about two inches long to hold the "belt," also about two inches thick. Magnets hold the bag shut (the two circles you can see in the picture) where D rings hold the bag on my hips.

I thought the bag would be bigger when I cast on but the size dictated the function of the bag, a small hip bag meant to carry only cash and keys for shopping as I talked about below.

Once I got over the "iron incident" I really liked this bag, and the lining (see below) which says something since I basically hate everything I make. But, if I didn't like Todd's mom so much, I might have kept it. It would have been great for sample sales and Last Chance runs.

I like crocheting, now I just have to learn how to read crochet patterns.

Insanity, partially explained.

If someone could explain to me how to craft and work and have enough time for blogging, I'm all ears. I can't seem to do all three. Lets go on a narrative of my latest project which I think illustrates why I can't do all there.

When I'm starting a project, I'm easily distracted. The project is shiny and new and there's no end in sight. I can pick it up, put it down, not even really think about it or its finish time. However, once I turn a corner and I'm on the back end of the project, I turn into a woman possessed. I stay up later. I knit longer. I. just. want. to. finish. So I work and work and work and work and then sleep. And then I go to work. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time for ye old blog. Hmmm.

That brings us to last night. I was at the very end of a project, a wee tote designed from corn yarn (yes, corn, how cool is that?!?) because corn is cool and its soft and the sig. other's mom lives in place where they grow corn and I knew she'd get a kick out of a bag made out of corn. Its an easy little project. Regina taught me how to crochet in the round and change colors in a pretty way so off I went striping to my hearts content.

I let the bag tell me where it was going and what it needed. (Yes, yarn talks to me. You want to make something of it punk?) So, it finished itself and declared itself to be a wee bag to be used for garage sale forays or bake sale volunteering, small enough to wear on the hip and big enough for money and keys. Sounds good to me! But it needed to be lined.

Off to Michael Levine on Sunday, my first time by the way. I'll be honest. I expected it to be bigger. But once I started to look at the fabrics, my head almost exploded. Everything was fabulous. They even had yarn I needed that I had no intention of buying there. So that was a plus and saved me another stop or two to find the yarn. Another bonus was Santino. That sighting can only be appreciated by the true Project Runway fans out there. He's even taller and skinnier in person than on the show. But, he looked the same otherwise, hanging at the button counter.

Everyone at Michael Levine was fabulous and helpful and I left with everything I needed for the wee bag as well as Mom's Mother's Day project.

Last night I sewed the lining for the purse. Now, I've sewn exactly three things, all for me, none of which had to be perfect. But, this is a gift so I wanted it to be nice. Needless to say, I did the lining and redid the lining and then the iron burped on the lining so I did it again.

Finally.

I was done.

I put the purse down.

I turned to grab something.

I knocked the iron over.

Are you gasping?

Gasping now would be a good thing.

Yup.

Hot iron + corn yarn = melted purse.

At 11pm.

sigh.

As "luck" would have it, it fell on the top of the purse. And as any crocheter will tell you, one of the many nice things about crochet is that its damn easy to frog and put back together. So I cut out the burned portion, saved the lining (!), crocheted the top again, affixed the closures again and promptly collapsed at 2am.

Now, any rational sane person would have just turned the iron off, cursed the iron (because its obviously not your fault for being a klutzy moron) and gone to sleep...I mean....someone rational would know that they're not leaving for Minnesota until Friday so they could have spent copious amounts of time during the rest of the week fixing the purse.

Yeah, rational doesn't live here.

The blog doesn't get updated. I post a month's worth of 366 at one sitting. I crazy. But, on the plus side, since my last blog entry I've finished 2 purses both fully lined. I'm even using one as my daily purse. I'll post pictures as soon as I find the time to upload them.

After I finish this purse.

heh.