crochet bags and knitted…

A few weeks back I showed you a sneak peek of some pastel African Flowers that I was crocheting for a future project.
Well I can now reveal that they were for another magazine project!  This is Creative Bag Making.
The cover above is just a mock-up as the bags are all still to be studio shot, but they have produced this cover as it is now available to pre-order. It is a special one-off mag that is crammed full of bag patterns, including a project from Katy (Littlest Thistle) and Bearpaw Craft’s bag making tutor Naomi Crowley.

I have provided full instructions to crochet the African Flowers, to join them, and to then construct this pretty bag. It’s a different version of this bag made last year, more summery and more suitable for a wool project bag.

So that’s lots of reasons to purchase this very good value publication (only £5.99!). Creative Bag Making is available to pre-order here and is due for publication in August.

And I have even more exciting magazine news to share with you later in the week!

But for now let’s have a bit more wool action.
We recently got some gorgeous new wool in from Chilian wool company Araucania, including this amazing 100% llama wool above. At £9.90 for 100g it’s at a great price for such a beautiful, incredibly soft yarn.

I was really fascinated by the way it had been dyed and was desperate to see how it would look knitted, but I wanted a really quick project (after spending months on Felix’s jumper).

This is how it looks if you knit quite short rows (25cm), it produces random bursts of stripes. I would love to see it knitted into longer rows for a garment.

But what could I make from such a small rectangle? Well, take some co-ordinating fabric and a 20cm zip and you can make your very own…

 … knitted pencil case! Every girl needs a knitted pencil case. Especially when she has a Quilt Retreat to organise!!

Yes, I hope you didn’t think you were going to get away without a mention of THE STITCH GATHERING!

We had a wonderful response to our ticket launch last week, with over two thirds of the tickets now sold! But that does mean there are still some left if you are at all tempted – head over here for more info.
And for those of you who have bought tickets and have a blog, you can ‘grab that button’ at the top of the page to let everybody know you will be attending!
I’m off to start a Stitch Gathering Flickr group now, more info about this later in the week!