I hope everyone had a nice christmas weekend! I know I did - busy busy, but really great. lots of family and good friends in town, lots of cute babies, good food, waaaayy too many new toys, and pretty much zero knitting. I did finish and felt my mom's gift with lots of time to spare. I just hadn't gotten a chance to post any pics or specs until now. and, stupid me, as soon as I'd tossed it into the washing machine and closed the lid, I smacked myself on the forehead and went "doh! I didn't take a before picture!" I also didn't measure it for before dimensions either. but... well... here it is anyway.

I did a little swirly design on the bottom and everyone has asked me "what does that say?" "what's this mean?" "is that her name?" or something along those lines. and then when I reply "it's just a swirly design," they just go "oh" with a strange look on their faces. so maybe it looks a little funny. I thought it was kind of cute. anyway, the colors are a little weird in the picture, but the body of the bag is brown (surprise!) and the trim is like a leafy green. here are the specs:

pattern: mine
yarn: patons classic merino, 1.5 skeins of brown, just a few bits of the green
needles: kp options us9 circular
dimensions after felting: 7"x7"x11"
finished: december 22, 2006
notes: there was great fear once I'd gotten a few inches into knitting this. I was working off a swatch I'd made using the patons a few months ago, in a different color, with only mental notes of what size needle and how many stitches and rows I'd marked. I was about 99% sure I'd remembered correctly, but my memory is not what many would call dependable these days. either way, I triple checked my "calculations" and cast on what seemed like the proper number of stitches. and then I crossed my fingers and prayed that I was right, even though it seemed off. to do the trim, I'd just joined the green yarn and knit one row, then cast off for the top. I went back and trimmed the insides of the handles by using a single crochet edge. yes, that's right. crochet. imagine that! a christmas miracle! the basic construction of the bag was knitting the bottom flat, then picking up stitches around the perimeter and joining in the round to knit the body. when it was about 2" shy of where I wanted to end up, I bound off a few stitches in the middle of the front and back, then on the next round, I cast on 4 more stitches than I'd bound off, to make that semicircle-esque handle. then I kept knitting until the handle was just shy of 2" and joined the green yarn for the trim. that's it! so easy! and it felted to just the size I'd wanted. and my mom seemed to like it, too. hooray!