Fingerless Gloves

I made these wrist-warmers with a soft blended yarn I got as a present from my Aunt Linda's favorite yarn shop. The pattern is again from knitty and it knits up pretty quickly. These are perfect for the spring and fall mornings when there's a little chill in the air, but not quite enough to break out the full gloves or mittens. These also come in handy if you spend a lot of time on the computer like I do, to take some pressure off your wrists and keep your hands warm while typing. The cables would come out better in a wool or cotton blend yarn, but I love the softness of these!

Soft and fuzzy!

Felted Market Bag

Before

After!

After covering all the major bases of knitting (scarves, hats, gloves, etc.) I needed a new challenge to expand my fiber horizons. I've always been intrigued by felting but had never been quite inspired to take it on myself. A trip out to Santa Barbara, California to visit my sister landed me in an adorable knitting shop called Loop & Leaf, where I was inspired by the owner's felted sample bowls that lined a shelf. I went out on a limb and bought enough yarn (or so I thought) to make a felted bag.

It's always a dilemma whether to buy the yarn first and find a pattern later, or go into the yarn shop armed with the pattern and choose yarn to suit it. I tend to buy yarn impulsively and then scour the web for the perfect pattern, which tends to work out well until I run out of yarn and frantically head for the store to hope there is a spare skein of yarn left in my color.

Anyway, in the case of the felted bag, I found a wonderful pattern on Knitty in the "French Market Bag." I used one skein of Sheep Shop Yarn Company's 100% wool yarn in powder blue (for the contrasting color) and three skeins in blue-green. The yarn knitted up beautifully although I did run out of the powder blue color but was able to improvise using extra blue-green yarn.

I'll post before and after pictures so you can see the magic of felting!