Progress on some fronts

Well, the good news is that I finally got my tote for the International Tote Exchange III sent out to my partner. Nothing like cutting it close, though---I sent it yesterday via express mail for a deadline of today! The bad news is that because my partner lives clear across the country, they couldn't guarantee that it would get to her today, even using the "more than $20 to send a package" express mail.

Since the tote has been knit for quite a while, and even felted for a while, you may well be wondering what took so long. And the answer, as it frequently is when I'm procrastinating (which some would tell you is really my favorite hobby), is that I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do to finish it. I realized when I first went to put it together last week that I'd messed up the handles by felting them separately instead of sewing them to the bag first so that they could felt together. And that, dear reader, is the lesson of actually reading the #*$&(@ directions first, instead of thinking that I know what I'm doing! (A lesson I should have learned in the first grade, but, apparently, didn't!)

So I spent a good couple of days debating with myself what I should do about it, whether it was worth redoing any or all of the bag, definitely didn't have time to do the whole bag again(!) (besides which, what am I, crazy?) I finally decided that the answer was to get some of those cute plastic handles that I'm always seeing in stores and thinking I should figure out a way to use.

I ended up cutting the felted handles up a bit to make the tabs that I slipped the plastic handles under to attach them to the bag. I also found a couple of cute silver buttons that, I thought coordinated nicely with the colors in the Kureyon that is threaded through the tote. (the tote is one strand of Kureyon in black, grey, and bits of other colors, and one of Patons classic wool, held together)

And I added a knit flower made from the Kureyon Here you see the finished product: And here is a close-up of the flower, which is a detachable pin, in case my pal doesn't want it on the bag. Kinda cute, if I do say so myself. I really hope my tote partner likes it and the goodies inside it. These include a knitting notepad, magnet, some Debbie Bliss cotton/cashmere, Burt's Bees hand creme (which I really like on my terriby dry skin), and of course a big ol' bag of chocolate!

The other inclusion, which I'm also a little proud of, are the hand-made (by me!) stitch markers. It was a bit of a learning process (don't look at the shapes of the loops!), but I think they, on the whole, came out cute, too. (Feel free to "oooh" and "aaahh"---heaven knows, if you don't, I'll have to ;-).