Lucy bag all finished!

Today, we have another finished project, my stripey lucy bag:-) Goodness, my WIP's are coming down a little - still not quite to manageable proportions but very nearly. So another one disappeared from the side menu - yay!

All I had to do for this was to sew on the handles and make the flower decorations but it seemed to take a while as I had to play with colour combinations for a while to get the four best flowers for each handle join. I think I may have enough extras to decorate a few more bags though:-) but they were fun to do and rather addictive!

I followed Lucy's tutorial for the double flower although after the first few, I realised I wasn't following the american terminology and I had a slightly different shape emerging, but hey, they look good too. I didn't bother with leaves as I liked the flowers on their own but I was also a bit impatient to get it finished so I could use it! A lovely bright cheery bag, especially on a dull winters day. Very Lucy but also very me;-))

There is a little knitting going on but mostly I'm still sorting furniture out after having to clear two rooms to lay some laminate. How come it all fitted in before but now it doesn't? That's what happens when you decide to improvise and move things in limited space - you end up with a pile of furniture in the middle of the room! You wouldn't think I'd drawn plans to scale and everything:-)) I know a bit OCD of me! Never mind:-) It'll all go somewhere.....

As long as I still have some knitting to hand to keep my sanity!

Stripey lucy bag

Hurrah! We have blogging lift-off today:-) Yes, my monitor arrived at lunchtime and I've been fiddling around trying to get as accurate a colour to the real knitted and crocheted thing as possible so I can post some photos!!

And here we have a bright start to the week with my Stripey Lucy bag - so called as Lucy from attic24 designed this and kindly wrote up a tutorial for all those who would like one of their own. I haven't quite finished this yet though as you can see the handles still need attaching and the flowers are half done as we speak. I have actually crocheted quite a few flowers now but I keep playing with the colours so I'll end up with twice as many as I'll need, but that's fine as I can save them to decorate another project sometime.....:-)

The bag itself is constructed with a simple circular base, increased to whatever size you fancy, then the increases stop and you carry on crocheting a tube till you think the height is right for your bag. The bag also has a lovely scalloped edging around the top - which is the same detailing as my stripey mitts but they were a Lucy pattern as well!

I didn't follow Lucy's recommended join as I didn't want to cut and knot the threads but it ended up looking a bit messy on the 'right' side of the bag - you can see it has a 'jog'/obvious join centre right of the picture. Rather than take it all back, I just turned it inside out as the join is a bit subtler:-) Next time I'll pay attention to the instructions:-)

So the bag is just waiting its little flower and leaf decorations and then it will be officially finished - my first FO of the year. This is a lovely quick crochet and works well with all the pattern details like the edging and the flowers. I went for a rainbow palette but I'm thinking this would look lovely in a more monochromatic colour scheme of chocolates and mochas or with an antiqued colour scheme of pale greens and muted pinks......mmmm!