I'm sad, but at least I got lots of buttons.

Okay, so, Max & Cindy both thought the entrelac half-blanket looked like a bag of some sort. So, slowly, it's becoming a bag. But not without some related trauma. You see, the last local chain fabric store is moving to Far Away. (Anything that requires crossing two interstates is "far away" in my book. As is anything that requires driving on THREE interstates to get to quickly.) The Hancock Fabrics closed a while back; now the JoAnn's Fabric stores in NoVa are consolidating west of here (good news for my cousin, bad news for me), and thus I either have to drive 40 min to get to a store, pray the one quilting store left locally has what I need, or go to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is not the preferred option.






The store is consolidating because (1) the economy is running six months behind the store revenues - there's been a MAJOR uptick in people making their own stuff again, but those profits won't show until November at the earliest and (2) the idiots at this mall decided to raise the rents. The number one comment heard, again and again, from everyone in line (hey, stuff was 90% off!!) was "Well, I've got no reason to come to this mall any more." And it was a couple of hundred people over the space of an hour! Most also shopped the office supply store when they came, or hit the designer discount shop, or one of the restaurants - but no one said they'd come just for any of those other stores. They came for the JoAnn's.

So, I wasn't able to get the invisible thread or matching lining fabric for the bag that I'd come in for; I was able to score $180.00 worth of REALLY COOL shiny buttons for $18. A huge bag of shiny buttons makes up for a lot of unhappy.

ANYway, I still had a bag to work on. Here's the outside, folded up:


Now, since I had all this blue yarn left over (having completely run out of lavender yarn), I decided to knit a lining, since buying one was Right Out. I cast on half the number of stitches I'd need for a round, then picked them up again on the backside, as if I was starting a short-row toe. This gave me a nice, solid, one-piece lining.


Since "having things work their way into and then through the seams" is something I like to avoid, having a one-piece lining makes me happy. I started it with size 5 needles (what I'd been using for the rest of the bag), then stepped up to 6s, and then finally 8s. I did a k2p2 rib at the top until it looked like it was about long enough (and hey, I wasn't completely out of yarn!).


The lining is currently inside out;
the knit side will be inside the bag; the purl side won't show. After turning the lining so the pretty side will be visible inside the bag, I tucked it into the outside to see if it worked. (Don't worry, I'd been checking the size as I knit - having a Too Big Lining or a Way Too Small lining would've been bad; luckily, this one was Just Right.


The sort-of idea of how it will look.
Now I just have to do the seaming on the outside of the bag, firmly attach the lining, and put on the buttons and the strap. I'll be doing a few more like this over the rest of the year, since it's a fun little yarn-bag, and probably putting out sets-of-three as patterns. We'll see.