Zips

The tulip beaded bag must have a zippered pocket in it, so I thought it would be a good idea to practice making zippered pockets in a bag. I did some sleuthing and found Maria Wallin's The Bia Bag as a free download from Craftsy. The bag is a little smaller than I was visualising, but it has three zips and a very detailed tutorial, so I decided it would do the trick. I had to buy zips, but found the three lots of fabric needed in my stash:

The pattern has a lot of pieces - I think it could only have been designed by a quilter!

I'm following the detailed tutorial step by step, very slowly and painstakingly.  At the moment I have a mish mash of half-completed elements, hopefully it will all come together eventually.

Glasses Case

A friend of mine has bought the recommended thread for the competition embroidery for me, but I thought I'd make a glasses case as I originally planned, for practice. I'm sure there's always a home for a pretty glasses case!

One thing I like about keeping a blog is that I can look back to find links I need. I looked up the link to the tutorial I used for the peg bag. 

This one was a bit trickier than the peg bag because the top is so small. I think next time I'll do the top stitching at the top by hand rather than machine. It was hard to keep it neat.

One By One

I have a number of odd balls of sock wool left over from projects. I peer at them every now and then, but they're not colours that 'go' well together, I couldn't think how to combine them to make them usable. Then I saw this pattern, Broken seed stitch or moss stitch socks from FitzBirch. I saw it on Pinterest and followed the links. This is the kind of pattern that is really up my street - it looks complicated but is very simple. No slipping or stranding or complicated repeats. The original has a light coloured solid yarn with a variegated, but I realised that black would also work. It has an interesting texture

Two In One

I don't really suffer from second sock syndrome, where you knit one sock and then don't get around to knitting the other, but I am always up for learning a new knitting technique, so when I came across this post on knitty.com, I had to try it.

It's a sort of double knitting, where you knit one sock inside the other, a stitch for the outside sock and then a stitch for the inside sock. I see the principle, but it seems an unnecessary complication to me. I'd rather just knit sock one and then sock two. Now I know!

Skirting The Issue

Or not. I've finished embroidering a border on my pencil skirt. I took a deep breath before I ironed it on the wrong side, but nothing alarming happened! I think the skirt looks a lot more interesting now and I've learnt several things that I can apply when I embroider a glasses case.

PS my sister-in-law tells me it doesn't matter that my blog says not secure, seeing as I am not collecting money nor personal information. She sent me this link to read. The blogger part, where I write blogs and have comments etc says that it is secure, so that's alright, Best Beloved.

The Boys

I'm still working on the embroidery, there's not much change from yesterday, so I thought I'd show the puppies who have been part of the establishment for a month. It's difficult to catch them all together at once, apart from when they're eating, so eating it is. Their mum Fay is an Australian Heeler and dad Rag is a Border Collie.

PS Can anyone tell me why my blog page now says it is 'Not Secure' and what I must do to change that?

Room For One More

I thought the sixth repeat of the edging was going to complete the circle, but it turns out there's room for one more - or two-thirds of one anyway. I think it must be because I measured the pattern with the final twiddle and then decided the continuous pattern would look better without it:

Goes to show that even a small mistake in measuring can make a big difference when repeated. Luckily it doesn't matter much in this case.