Bag Lady

Like most knitters, I have devoted my life to the quest for the perfect knitting bag.  About every six or eight months, I fall out of love with my current solution and decide there Has To Be a Better Way.  I have tried designer bags, utility bags, fancy-pants bags, no-frills bags, and bagmaster 2000s.  All of therm are both perfect, and totally useless, depending on what I'm trying to stuff into them.  My most recent crusade has been for something that is Big Enough.  By big enough, I mean that I have been experiencing trouble with the size of my projects, relative to the size of my bag.  It turns out that a man's size large top-down raglan turtleneck takes up more room in one's knitting bag than one might think.  It also has a tendency to squish the PB & J you threw in there for lunch, and to obliterate any chance you had of finding/answering your cell phone before it stops ringing. 

I was in denial about this problem for a long time, because I had such high hopes for my current specimen.  The thing cost a fortune: it could be described as a status knitting bag, and I saved up for it for quite a little while, telling myself it would be worth it because this one was finally going to fulfill the quest.  It's a fine vehicle, and sexy, too - non-knitters are always complementing me on it - but I have been asking too much of it.  I realized this when an abrupt stop in the car sent the bag flying off the front seat, vomiting its contents all over my car.  It was open, of course, because the project du jour was too fat to close it.  I snapped (again):  There Has To Be a Better Way.

I carefully researched the options available (again), weighed them against the knitting budget (whose first priority must always be Yarn Procurement), and determined (again) that I was hosed.  The bag I wanted to try not only exceeded my allowance, it's unavailable until its maker catches up a backlog of orders that she noted on her website sometime during the Clinton administration.  And I wasn't sure it was the right answer for me anyway. 

So for the cost of about half of the backordered bag, and one (albeit precious) weekend, I broke down and made this:

It can do this:

And also this:

That is a full-size Peace Fleece cardigan in progress, in there: the biggest thing I had available to try it out with.  The cardi does not have sleeves yet, but there is still gobs of room in there for them, and all the yarn for the whole project, too.  Could probably fit some small children in there as well, while I'm at it.  This thing is Commodious.  It has all the pockets I wanted, in all the right (I think) places - note easy access to cell phone on the right, and business card case on the left.  And the lining is light-colored (silk dupioni, no less - why not?) so I can see all the way to the bottom.  The old-school top dowels keep it stable, and the leather bottom feels nice and looks tough.

Pleased with myself?  Heck Yeah.  Getting curvature of the spine from carrying it much?  Probably.
 

Homecoming

Phillip is sick.  And by that I mean that he has saved up about five winters' worth of head colds and minor irritations in order to experience them more fully, all at once.  Dude can be very efficient.  This would be the classic, wretched, late-winter flu and he has been on his face with it for no less than five days.  Which means that I am effectively a working single parent this week, with the added bonus of nursing duties.  In Sickness and in Health.  Whatever: This Blows.  Oh, and I really need to review and return about 100 pages of tech edits to my publisher.  Yesterday.  And the hacking cough of Certain People who are in the same room with me has kept me awake all night for about a week, so you can sprinkle sleep deprivation into the Gloom Stew we're cooking at our house, as well.

So I arrived home last night after an exceptionally long day at work,  struggled to divest myself of coat, purse, laptop, and keys.  An unusually loud racket coming from the living room should have motivated me to turn right around and leave again.  Instead I followed the din and surveyed the wreckage:

1.  Five children, only some of whom belonged to me, feasting on Cub Scout fund-raiser chocolate bars and pepperoni sticks in my living room.  The Universe has again spoken on my choice of white slipcovers.  Nice work, that.

2.  A sheepish-looking Scottish Terrier lurking near a suspicious puddle under my desk.  Evidently neither the Bed-Ridden nor the Chocolate-Besotted are functional dog walkers.  Brilliant.

3.  The 413th pile of tangled yarn this week: Unsupervised Kittens + Yarn = Carnage.

My instincts kicked in and I fled.  By which I mean that I sighed heavily and went to check the mail.

Then everything turned on a dime, because waiting for me at the mailbox was this:

And if that weren't enough, this:

Apparently, the Universe has not completely given up on me...

Unnecessary Roughness

Gruesome, isn't it?  I wasn't even reefing on it - honest.  I was minding my own business, lever knitting on my ubiquitous 1 x 1 scarf (note how much longer than last time it isn't), when all of a sudden the end of the needle was pointing to a totally different part of the room than the point of it.  I was Horrified.  Stunned.  Made a number of (presumeably) strange faces while I opened and closed my mouth, carp-like, in disbelief.  Imagine my chagrin when Phillip laughed his butt off and accused me of Full Contact Knitting.  He has taken to asking me how many needles I have left each day.  I don't know why it tickles him so, but he is delighted by my accidental display of brute force.  That's when I remembered:  Dude did NOT produce a Valentine this year.  Or even an apology.  Just plain blew it off.  Guess what he's giving me for a belated present:

Yep, they're Signatures, and they're on their way to my house Right Now.  I have been resistant to metal needles since about day one, but I think the problem is that I never liked the feel of "swinging" them as I throw all my stitches right-handed.  I also have had problems with the slipperiness of metals I've tried in the past.  But since my rosewood size three's clearly cannot take the heat required for me to learn lever knitting on this particular 1 x 1 rib scarf, it's time to bust out some heavy artillery.  Plus, they are dead sexy - even if I don't like knitting with them, I'm still gonna dig looking at them.  And Phillip got me a killer Valentine, even if he doesn't know it yet (yes; I DID give him a present - Brooks Brothers necktie, thank you very much).  I'm thinking that if my spouse Amnesias enough special occasions, I could have the whole set in no time.  While I'm waiting for the goods, I started to swatch a new confection for Black Water Abbey:

That's a beautiful swatch, right there; I don't care who you are.  I didn't do the color any favors with this shot, but believe me when I tell you that Old Purple Rocks.  This is gonna be just the thing to bring the Spring!