I've been playing around with the lining.  The fabric I'm going to be using is patterned, so I'm going to need a cream outer layer and the patterned inner layer.  I don't want the patterns showing through in between the flowers.  For messing around, I've made a test lining from a crappy old sheet that I keep around just for this purpose.

I cut the lining so it's the size of the purse when it was a flat rectangle.  Yes, amazingly, I thought to measure it before I sewed up the purse. ;)  So that my test is as close to the real thing as possible, I sewed two pieces of blue sheet together, turned them, ironed the edges, and sewed a one-forth-inch seam around the outer edge.

My first idea, which I don't have pictures of, was to gather the edges.  Oh, man, that was a crap idea.  How in the world would I sew all that fabric to the handles?  My second idea, which I also didn't photograph, was to do a series of elaborate pleats along each of the four edges.  Personally, I think that's the best way to go for an even pouf, but since my lining is two-thick ... four-thick on the turned edges ... this was going to get too thick for my sewing machine.  Plus, it was going to be a huge headache to figure out exactly how to do the pleats so the edges ended up the right width for sewing into the purse.

I don't mind taking the time to do the elaborate pleats, but I imagined there was an easier way, so I decided to strip the process down to it's simplest bits.

I measured the opening.  The front and back are 9.5 inches and the sides are 8 inches across.

Then I measured in half that distance from each corner on the sides of the lining.

Then I folded up the fabric in the middle, accordion-style.  The flaps on the right and left equal 9.5 inches and would be sewn into the purse.  The folded bits would be hidden between the lining and the crocheted flowers.

This is the lining with all four sizes accordioned up.

Here's what it looks like pinned into the purse.  I didn't like how the lining between the folds is pretty tight.  It wasn't terrible, but it still constricted the opening a little.

Next I tried putting all the pleats in the corners instead of the middle of each side.  I completely took out the previous pleats and folded up all the fabric on the corners leaving a 9.5 or 8 inch flat bit in the center of each side (no picture outside of the purse ... sorry).  I thought this would be better because I'd have a flat edge to attach to the purse instead of the two half-edges.  But this actually worked out worse.  First, the sides of the purse are curved, so the flat edge doesn't ease along the edge.  Second, pleating in the corners was more bulky and unwieldy.

In my next effort, I decided to split the difference.  I put two pleats on each side (spaced so that half the width is in the center and a forth of the width is on either side of that ).  This spreads out the bulk of the pleats and breaks up the line of the lining edge so it can curve around the opening.

Compare this photo with the other two open-purse photos above.  See how much open the opening seems?  Going from one to two pleats makes a huge difference.

So the lining is 90% planned.  I may still end up doing more pleats or adding a pocket.  Maybe not.  The important thing is that I know I can turn the big rectangle of fabric into a purse lining. I'll probably wait until next weekend to cut the lining out of the real fabric just in case I get a better idea for doing the pleats.

It's freeEEeezing here, which mostly scuttles our 2-hour, nightly walks.  I like to be able to talk without having my scarf muffling me and I think having feeling in my fingers is important, so during the worst of the winter weather, we usually stay inside and watch movies.  But I was getting a little stir-crazy the other night, so I suggested a walk to the bookstore to hang out until they closed.  You know, 'cause I live la vida loca.

Anyhoo, I was paging through all the crochet magazines because I never give up hope that someday (someday!) there will be something (anything!) cute enough or cool enough to make and I saw this ...

Wood grain* pillows!  Are you kidding me?!  My heart literally started racing.  I know wood grain all the rage right now and half of you are groaning ... well, I know half of me is groaning ... but the whole idea of crochet wood grain is brilliant.  Brilliant!  They were designed by Allison from Pepperberry Crochet

This is exactly the kind of project that is perfect for crochet:  stripes of color; free-form shapes incorporated in a larger design; rows of differing sized stitches; the potential for "making it up as you go"; and there is even the possibility for some 3-D stuff, like branches.

The article mentions that you could make a tote instead of a pillow ... yes!  YES!  Thank you for that suggestion from the bottom of my heart.  This article is the holy grail for which I have been searching for almost 17 years in crochet magazines ... the holy grail being a project that actually excites me**.

I can't wait to try it out!  I'm not going to do it exactly like her pattern, but there are some great ideas about varying your stitches in the original.  This project is going to the top of the list ... right after all the other stuff that's at the top of the list. ;)

* I REFUSE to use the F B words.  They bug me.  And if you use them, I'll pretend that you're saying "wood grain."

** I've seen projects that I might make or that I think might look good (maybe), but nothing that had me wishing I had yarn and a hook with me at the book store so I could start swatching.  Never.  Case in point, I kinda like this sweater (from the same magazine) but I'm 100% sure it'd look barfy on me and it's not even anything that I'd even try on at the store.  But still, something makes me think it *might* be nice.  Maybe, but probably not.  Perhaps the sweater just looks appealing in contrast to all the other stuff in the magazine.  I totally don't want to single out this particular issue or this particular magazine.  All the crochet (and knit, truth be told) magazines I encounter are mostly fug.  Like 99% fug.  Too much fug.

I think part of the problem is not using the right tool for the job.  There are things that crochet is good for and there are things that knit is good for and there are things that embroidery is good for and there are things that macrame is good for (owls!) and there are things that weaving is good for, etc. They are not interchangeable.  They each have strengths and weaknesses.

I love chocolate chip cookies like you wouldn't believe, but I wouldn't try to build a car out of them.  See what I mean?  Crochet and knit magazines are full of projects that are the equivalent of showing me how to build a car out of chocolate chip cookies.  

OK, they are only half cookie-cars.  The other half is just plain ugly. ha!

I was *this close* to "finishing up the folding over and sewing of the handles" and something started bothering me.  The cord was making the right and left edge bow out more than I liked.  See it on the left?  I didn't want my purse to gape open like that.  I want it to lay closed more flatly, like on the right.

The other thing that was bothering me is that with one big cord in the handles, they would never stretch ... and stretching is the only hope I have that they will ever fit over my shoulder.  

sigh ...

So I un-sewed most of the handle-fold-over-ness.  The reason I didn't just thread the rope pieces through is that I wanted to secure them in place by sewing them to the crochet at around their midpoint.  This way, when the handles stretch, the cord will stay centered.  Above you can see the simple anchoring I did.

To keep the rope from unraveling, I tied some yarn around the ends.  When making my segments, I would put two ties around the cord and cut in between them.

Snip!  

I also put a piece of cord in the front and back sections to pad the top edge of the purse.  See how nicely the purse lays closed since there is a cordless space on the side?  All the ends are woven in and the handles are COMPLETELY done.  For reals.  Whew.

I actually had more cord left over than I thought I would.  It's enough to save, don't you think? ;)

I've had a couple of ideas about how to do the lining and I can't wait to try them out ... soon, I hope!

I encountered this technique in Creepy Cute Crochet and the Flower Purse is my first opportunity to use it.  Before learning this technique, I would just pull the end tightly and weave it in.  That leaves a little bump in edge of the crochet.  

This technique show you how to "fake" a crochet stitch to connect the last stitch to the first stitch of the row, which looks awesome.

Explanation text is above its corresponding photo.

This is the end of the last row of crochet.  The stitch marker on the left is the first stitch of the row and the stitch marker on the right is the last stitch of the row.

Thread your yarn on a needle.  Put needle through the first stitch of the row under both top yarn strands coming in from the front of your piece and coming out the back of your piece.  Pull through.

Put the needle in the middle of the last stitch of the row (where the yarn end starts) and go under the top yarn strand that is on the back side of your piece.

Ta da!  After this, you can weave in the end and knot it in an inconspicuous place.  Since I'm folding these handles over, I knotted it a couple rows down because it'll be hidden in the fold.

OK, I'm to the part in this project where I normally set it aside and never finish it.  Not because I don't want to, or I'm bored of it, but because the tasks ahead require thoughtfulness and chunks of time for execution.  The crochet part is easy because I can fit that in 3 minutes at a time.  But finishing the handles and sewing the lining is a whole other story.

I had about an hour yesterday to devote to the handbag.  It was a very productive hour!  I realized that I couldn't even begin thinking about the lining until I had the handles folded over and sewn together.  

I started with the middle sections of the bag front and back.  This is one of the sides in progress.  I'm going back and forth skipping a crochet stitch on each side to create a ladder-like stitch (what is this stitch called?) to keep everything lined up.

Once I got to the handles, I remembered that I wanted to pad them inside with something.  I sorta remembered that there were some cording bits in the stash-builder box Michelle  of Green Kitchen sent me.  Lo and behold!  I found a length of fat brown (brown!) cord that is about the right length to pad the entire top of the purse, handles and sides.  How amazing is that*?

When the stitching changed from the side of the bag to the handles, I switched to a whip stitch so there wouldn't be a bumpy ridge on the handle.  The whip stitch and the cord padding combine to make a perfectly round handle.  It feels so great in your hand!

An hour wasn't quite enough time to finish up the handles, but I'll be finished by next weekend since I can work on them in the spare moments.  I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to do the padding part, specifically, securing the ends together for the large handle bit.  I have some ideas.  I might also have to undo the sides to get the padding in there, but I think I can figure out a way to thread it through.

* When Michelle sent me that box, I barely had a button, let alone a stash.  Since then, I've collected odds and ends here and there and have quite a respectable stash going.  My nature is to squirrel stuff away, but I've also found the joy of not having extraneous, imminently useful stuff laying around.  The situation I find myself in now, wanting no clutter and also collecting clutter sometimes leaves me at odds with myself.  

But as long as I have the space for it, I'm going to allow myself to stash away crafting supplies.  It's especially nice now since I can't easily take a bus to crafting supply stores.  I would find it ridiculous to spend 2 hours and $2.90 on buses to go buy an 80-cent zipper for a project.  Plus, this crazy economy is affecting me in ways I never expected.  It's nice that I've been able to craft all year without having to buy much of anything.  I'm so happy that I was able to make this flower purse entirely from stash supplies!

And the most powerful piece of evidence that I should err of the side of stashness is that small length of brown cord.  It's perfect and exactly what I needed.  It's the right length, the right size, the right color (any other color would have shown through the crochet stitches).  Such a coincidence doesn't go unnoticed by me.

No one has declared the cactus updates boring, at least not to me, so I'm gonna keep them up.  Plus, you guys have all the good ideas ...

Case in point, many people have said I'm probably over-watering the cacti.  This last month I drastically cut back on the watering and they have thrived.  Dramatically so!  I'm going to keep giving them just a couple drops of water each every other week for the next month and see if they keep growing.

The other suggestion I hear a lot is that they are too close together.  I'm not buying it because they sprouted literally on top of each other, but spreading them out certainly won't hurt anything, so I'm going to try it.  I need to find another planter, but I'm hoping I can have them repotted by January's update.

I want to find them something cute ... or at least something with more dirt in it.  They are sort of pitiful sunken in their half-filled, cast-away tupperware container.

The sad white ghost from last month is still hanging on, but it still looks like it'll shrivel up any second now.  I've marked him, along with a bunch of other notes, on my Flickr.  Here's the littlest one in the corner.  Next month we'll check in with him specifically.

There has been no progress on the flower purse since the last update, but a discussion of seamless single crochet is in order.

The handles are crocheted back and forth around the opening of the purse with a slip-stitch and chain turn at the end of each row.  That's the diagram above.  

I'm going to be honest with you here, I'm only 97% sure I understand the diagram*.  What I see is: single crochet in each single crochet in the row below until the end of the row, slip stitch to the first single crochet of the row, chain one, turn, make the first single crochet in the last single crochet of the previous row (meaning that you have to skip over the slip stitch that joined the first and last stitches of the previous row before you make your first single crochet).

This is not how I do it in my seamless single crochet tutorial, but I thought I'd try their way first because I was in a rush and didn't want to mentally re-write the pattern if I didn't need to.  If it looked crappy, I'd just do it my way.

And when I was done ... the "seam" (between the two red stitch markers) looked almost perfect.  Very *very* close to perfect.  I was kind of stunned because I spent days and days (literally ... during a vacation) testing out all the ways to do seamless single crochet and I thought I'd picked the best looking one when I did my tutorial ... but apparently I didn't.

My only explanation is that the way you accomplish this kind of seamlessness involves skipping over a stitch after you turn and it *feels* like you're going to totally buckle the seam, but it doesn't *actually* buckle the seam.  In fact, I like this way much better because it doesn't require the deep-single-crochet stitch that I include in my tutorial.

After finishing the purse handles and being super-happy with the "seam" I wanted to try out color changes ... because with my deep-single-crochet system color changes are less than smooth.

The row switch-a-roo is between the two arrows.  Doesn't that color change look awesome?!  The bottom edge of each colors' rows are smooth and straight.  No errant stitches.

For comparison purposes, here is what color changes look like with the deep-single-crochet seamless technique from my tutorial.  And, actually, when I do color changes on the top row of the two-row color stripes, I make an "even deeper than normal" single crochet to hide some of the other stuff going on.

My original way doesn't look heinous, but it doesn't look as good as the other way *AND* the other way is so much easier to remember, understand, and explain to others.

I definitely want to make a new seamless single crochet tutorial showing this technique because it's totally the best way to do it.  I hope I can do it soon, but I wouldn't bet on it.  Maybe I'll just make a note on the tutorial to see this post until I can get to it.

I'm so happy about finding such a simple, sublime way to do seamless single crochet.  How come it's nowhere to be found on the web?  How come I've only seen it in exactly one** crochet book ... not to mention magazines or websites? How come nobody commented on my tutorial saying, "Hey, I do it a totally easier way ..." in the last  26 months? It seems like such a useful technique.  It should be one of the fundamentals of crochet!

*ACK!  While I was editing this post just now, I realized that I completely mis-read the chart.  Thank goodness for that 3% of doubt which kept my eyes open.  They are not closing up the seam as they crochet.  They are going back and forth without closing it.  Then, at the end, they are slip stitching to to left petal, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the first row on the left, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the second row on the right, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the third row on the left, chaining one, etc.

Also, thank goodness that I didn't read the chart correctly.  See what good can come from having no clue what you're doing?

Although, I could still be totally wrong about what the chart says ... wouldn't that be funny? :)

**The above note means that this technique is mentioned in exactly ZERO books or magazines or websites.  How in the world can that be possible?  How?!

Over 3500 free downloads have been, well, downloaded since the new system went up November 11th.  Thirty-five.  Hundred.  In just over a month. Wow.

How awesome is that chart?!  Thank you, Google!  Free, customizable, easy, awesome.  I'm a little surprised that Sasha and the Supercute Sea Creatures are kicking Sigmund's ass.  But I'm 100% happy that so many people have downloaded my patterns.  Keep it up!

I've started to get a trickle of pictures, links, and emails from those of you that have had a chance to sew up some felt sea life.  Look at these beauties!

Supercute Sea Creatures Mobile.  How smart is that?!.

This adorable holiday seahorse is just hanging around.

Stevie the Octopus has been on many adventures since he came into being.  Most recently he's been seen cavorting with towel animals.  That saucy monkey!  Here he is on a rooster!

Here's an acrobatic octopus in hot pink and black.

Don't look directly into the hypnotic eyes of this bright red squirmer.

And these newlyweds added photos of their wedding and honeymoon to the octo flickr pool.

Actually, you should go check out all the creatures in the Octopus Flickr Pool because you don't want to miss the pirate, the pandapuss, the John Deere tractor driver,  and some of the cutest photography on the web.

The Supercute Sea Creature Flickr Pool and the Seahorse Flickr Pool are less packed with photos, but no less cute.  You guys are going to change that, right?  I mean the "less packed" part, not the "cute" part ... :)

If you've made something from my pattern pretty please add it to the Flickr pool (I'll automatically be notified).  If you don't use Flickr, send me a link to the photo or your blog or, heck, just email me a photo!  I'd love to see what you're making and feature it in the next Peep Show installment.

Tina Jett from Scatterbox sent me this amazing hand sewn felt circus tent.  Actually, it arrived on the same day as Bethany's package.  And they both arrived on the same day as our new router.  It was a red letter day, alright!
I'm not sure how I found Scatterbox.  It's probably because someone clicked through from her site and I saw the referrer.  When I saw this circus tent on her site, I flipped out.  It's quite amazing and even more impressive when you discover it's her FIRST stuffie.  Wow!  It's also super cool (and weird) that I was in some way an inspiration for this little bit of wonderful.

I totally want to find pictures of a circus online and make the clowns and animals and sideshows tiny, print them out, and make a little circus diorama with the tent.  Wouldn't that be effing awesome!?!  I seriously imagine there's a whole bunch of people and animals already living in there.  Maybe I can live in there, too.  Well, I've already decided I want to live in here, but maybe the circus tent can be my summer home.  Thank you so much, Tina!

I got a Martha Stewart marketing package in the mail that contained these compartment cookie boxes.  This is the marketing photo ... not me.  ;)  

Oh, sweet heaven, they are adorable!  The kit comes with red boxes (bottoms & lids), scalloped-edged, waxed paper boxes that fit inside the red box to split it into four compartments, polka-dot tissue paper to line the scalloped-edged boxes, and scalloped labels for the "to/from" info.

In addition to using them to package up cookies and sweets as shown here, I think these boxes would also be perfect for presenting faux treats made out of felt, tiny hand sewn animals, or a selection of crafty supplies.  Wouldn't it be cute to fill them with ric-rac, buttons, embroidery floss, and assorted beads & sequins?  Or how about a pin cushion, mini scissors, a measuring tape, and some needles & thread ... a mini sewing kit?  There are so many possibilities!

OK, I couldn't resist ...

How crazy is it that my pin cushion fits in there perfectly?  Maybe I should have covered my paint-splattered table first ... ugh.  You probably didn't even notice because of all the cute ... right?

The only caveat is that the package of boxes I got were glued wrong.  All the bottoms were glued so they are *just* too wide for the tops to fit over them.  You wouldn't believe how long I tried to get them to fit together before I stopped blaming myself and started blaming the box.  I had to re-glue the bottom of the box so it would fit in the lid.  If I was doing a ton of these for holiday treats, that would add quite a bit of time.


I think these are quite versatile.  The packaging for these boxes has snowflakes on it, but the boxes themselves don't.  They are just red.  They could be used for birthdays, Valentines Day, or any time.  They are truly adorable, as you would expect. from Martha and crew.

There was a little mini-catalog in the box, too.  I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw the die-cut felt ribbon.  Imagine the holly with red pompoms, the snowflakes over red wrapping paper, or the gingerbread men hand decorated with sequins and glitter glue and used as tags.

Also, a little birdie told me that all Martha Stewart products are 30% off at Micheal's through December 13th.  Kinda makes me wish I had a car, because you can only carry so much back on the bus.