What I've bagged this week

I like to give people useful gifts. From moving house several times, I know how easy it is to accumulate, well, maybe not junk, but miscellaneous items, without even realizing it. I always feel guilty when I put something which was a gift in a bag for the charity shop, but the fact of the matter is I only have so much space. So when possible I like to give people things they'll really love or use, if not both. It was my friend NIkki's birthday during the week. The patterns and color schemes of the majority of her clothes are quite similar to a lot of my own gear, which happily meant that I had some fabric in my stash that I thought she'd like. I made a couple of shopping bags as Christmas gifts, and as I couldn't make up my mind which fabric she'd prefer, I made this one reversible, with one handle of each fabric.

Having given it to the birthday girl earlier this week, I'm happy to say she was very pleased. As well as this I cast on one of the pattern from the new Stitch 'n Bitch book which I mentioned last week. I bought some Patons DK Cotton online last week. I had bought it with a baby blanket I'm making in mind, but didn't realize it was mercerised. Material like cotton is sometimes subject to mercerisation either in order to give the fibre a more lustrous appearance or to make it stronger (both will be achieved). In my experience, it's generally much less soft than untreated cotton, so it wasn't really suitable for my baby blanket. It is perfect, however, for the No plastic please mesh tote pattern by Elisa Contolini. This pattern is great for getting to grips with the basic stitches involved in lace knitting, namely, yarn over, slip slip knit and knit two together. However, I have found myself mysteriously losing or gaining stitches here and there, so I've had to throw in the odd random increase or decrease. When you're knitting into stitches which don't appear to be connected to anything else, as in this open mesh pattern, it's much less obvious when you've made a mistake unless you're paying the closest of attentions. Fortunately, this also makes the pattern extremely forgiving to these random alterations I've had to make - I really doubt anyone will ever really spot them.

Have a lovely week everyone.