In Which I Show the Rotary Cutter Who's Boss

Hello, bloggy peeps! Sorry for the long absence after leaving you with shots of my mangled finger. (I have to admit that after all the blood stopped gushing, it clearly wasn't as bad as it had originally seemed. However, for a knitter (on a tight deadline, no less!) who uses that exact spot on that exact finger to help maneuver things, it has been pretty annoying.) Thankfully, I have been able to retrain my hand to knit just fine while holding that finger out of the way. It makes little everyday things annoying though--like typing and flossing and all that fun stuff. But my youngest sister (a 9 year old newbie knitter) was kind enough to knit up a squooshy finger cover for me and send it in the mail. Isn't it cute? She "discovered" seed stitch all by herself and has been whipping out these little thimbles/finger warmers/finger covers. Mine comes in handy because it keeps me from bumping my finger into things. :)

As long as my finger was on the mend, I was not about to let the rotary cutter win! So after staring at it hatefully for a couple of days, I buckled down and tackled that tote bag. I spent all weekend (when I was resting my hands from their new way of knitting) sewing this thing up and I have to say that I'm very pleased with how it turned out. :)

It's a tote bag pattern from the first issue of Stitch Magazine (published last fall). It's lined on the inside and has two layers of pockets on the outside for storing all your sewing/crafting stuff in. I have to admit that I was afraid my machine's needle was going to break from sewing through all that fabric, but it held together just fine. There were a couple of mishaps, such as sewing both sides of the bag together at one point, but I managed to fix everything that came my way. There are a couple of mistakes in the pattern: they have you fold the top layer over to the inside way too far, and the instructions for the straps would end up only 1/2" wide if done as written. Thankfully, I had some spare brown fabric and interfacing so I was able to make new straps.

In knitting news, I received my lace yarn from MacKintosh Yarns last Friday and I have been working on the first of four shawls. Can I just say: Wow! This yarn is nice stuff!!! My first project is the Kiri shawl out of Rhiannon Lace in a nice deep pink color called Hibiscus. This is probably the smoothest 100% silk yarn I have worked with and it took a while to get used to. It's so slippery! But it is also shimmery and so light you wouldn't believe it. I'm over halfway done with the shawl and it has gotten so big that it takes about 15 minutes to do one row. I was complaining to my brother about how my progress seems to have slowed down so much now, but he sagely reminded me that I am still using up yarn at the same rate. Oh, yeah! Thanks, Pete!