This UFO was born from a very vintage skein of yarn that I got from my Mom's uber-stash. I don't remember, to be honest, what the yarn was called or even the fiber content. What I do remember is that this particular skein of yarn had been floating around in my mom's house since I was a wee little one in the late 70's, early 80's. When my mom had me cull her stash for her about 5 years ago, I grabbed a bunch of these ye olde skeins that I could remember from my early childhood, thinking that if she hadn't used them by now she wasn't going to. And, they had a sort of vintage appeal to them at that point, too.
The yarn appears to be 100% fuzzy acrylic, but part of me wants to say that it also had some wool or mohair mixed in. It was billed as a tweed yarn, and was 2 contrasting colored yarns that were worked together to create the tweed effect. In this particular skein, the strands were a peachy-apricot and a peachy-brown.
Since I only had one skein of this to work with, and the colors weren't suitable for me to wear, my options were fairly limited. In the end, I decided on a purse. It was knit in two pieces: a large rectangle for the body, back, and bottom; and a long, thin piece for the strap. All the knitting was done in stockinet, and I really liked how the "tweed" worked up. I got the bag all assembled and the top kept curling because it was stockinet, so I worked 2 rows of single crochet around the top and that fixed that. In the process, I also added a loop to hold the bag closed. I still had a bit of yarn left, so I seperated the strands and made 6 crochet roses for the lower front corner of the bag.
With the bag all assembled, I moved on to lining. I got all the pieces sewed together fine and then when I put the lining in place to check for size, I noticed that when I sewed the strap of the bag in place, I'd twisted it several times. Oh, dookie. I didn't have enough yarn left so I could remove the strap and reattach it properly, so it just stayed that way. I used the little bit I did have left to sew the edges of the strap together to make it a tube so the gaff was less noticable. But the strap still neaded to be lined for stability. In the end, I just hemmed the edges of a narrow strip of fabric and ran it through the tube and connected it to the bag lining.
And then, it sat.
And sat. And any time I straightened up my craft area, I'd come across it and wonder why I hadn't sewn the lining in yet and it'd get cast aside again to be overlooked for a few more months.
So, today, the first day of the UFO knit-a-thon, I pulled it out and threaded a needle. It took all of 15 minutes to sew the lining in place and another 10 minutes to pick a button for the front and sew that in place, too. And, voila, I give you my first FO of the knit-a-thon:
Cue the trumpets!
3 comments:
how do you crochet roses?
There are several ways. You can crochet a long strip, several rows high, and then spiral it in on itself, tacking it in place as you go. Or, do the same thing, and on the last row, work some shells (*7dc in one stitch, skip one, sc in next stitch, repeat from * across) and then coil it up and tack in place. That's the way I made these. You can google around for flower patterns, too. There's lots of ways. :)
Oops! You need to skip one between the sc and the next shell, too!
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