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Carroll Bag now available!

The Carroll Bag pattern is on it's way to yarn shops around the country!  And I've added lots of new shops over the last couple of months.  You can see them all on the Where To Buy page. 

If you don't have a yarn shop in your area that stocks my patterns, you can also purchase it online through the Black Sheep Bags retail shop.

Without the support of the online knitting community, I know I would not be nearly as successful or in nearly as many shops as I am today!  Thanks!!

Why make a swatch. . .

. . . when you can make a fingerless mitt?  I started swatching colorway 5 yesterday and realized that I had enough to "do something" with.  So I took out the design notebook, worked up some numbers and started this little mitt with a lace panel.  Here's a bit better view of the lace:

A fun little project that only took me about an hour (even with bits of tinking due to design mis-calculations).  Now I only had enough yarn to make one, so I suppose this little mitt won't get much wear, but at least now I know how much fiber I need to make a pair!

*** Note appalling lack of light tent usage for these photos.  I still don't have a permanent set up, but I'm working on constructing one!

The Carroll Bag!!

Black Sheep Bags news!  Last night I finished up the purple, Cascade 220 version of the Carroll Bag and today Pete & I did the "photo shoot."  So the new bag is almost ready for her release!  Off she goes to the printer on Monday.  I hope to start shipping patterns to yarn shops on the 25th.  (I know it seems like a long time, but I have to go to Ohio for a funeral and I have a big charity event next week.)

The Carroll Bag is a medium sized bag, perfect as an everyday handbag or a medium sized project bag.  I think it would also make a good spindle bag!  The Kureyon version uses 4 skeins and the bag made with Cascade 220 takes 2 skeins.  The finished size is approx. 9" X 3" X 11".

I hope you like it  :)

Introducing the Carroll Bag!

Well, here's the latest Black Sheep Bags design -- the Carroll Bag, named after my Mom.  If you remember the pink tank top I designed for Maddie last year, the bag may look familiar.  I had to alter the tank top patten a bit, but they are very similar.  In fact, when I finished knitting the bag, Maddie asked if she could wear it!  I had to explain that the bottom was all closed up because it was a bag, and not another tank top  :)

Now I have to write up the pattern, knit another bag in Cascade 220 for the cover photo (and to test the pattern), then I may or may not make a third bag (actually a fourth since bag #1 didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it), after that the pattern goes off to the printer and when it comes back I print and cut the pictures and assemble the patterns.  Whew!  So even though the design is finished, I'm still several weeks from having a pattern available.  I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Lace Design?

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Well, I decided that it was time to design something besides felted bags.  (Although I finished up the first prototype of my most recent bag and it's hitting the washing machine later today!)  Here's is a swatch of a lace pattern I drew up over the weekend.  My plan is to make a scarf with the KSH using this lace pattern.  If successful, I may even print up the pattern.  Here's another photo of the lace. . .

I just worked up the swatch in some left over sock yarn and gave it a quick blocking last night so that I could actually see the pattern.  Tell me what you think.  Pete said he liked it, but he's my husband so he's not exactly unbiased.

In other news, we made a trip to IKEA this past weekend and I got this cute lamp for my office:

My husband is mostly Swedish (as opposed to me -- German, Irish, English, Norwegian,  and bits of others) and I've grown to love all things swedish.  Isn't the little bird adorable?  Maybe I'll try to get together a post on Swedish decorative arts sometime so you can see a little of why I like it so much!

New Bag Design?

Sometimes when I'm feeling uninspired, I need to take a step back and try something new.  The sewing and crafting I have been doing has really changed my attitude!  In fact, diverting my mind from knitting has helped me to come up with a few new bag designs.  That's the first one that I'm working on.  It's based on, believe it or not, this tank top that I designed for Maddie last year.  Hopefully proto-type #1 will be finished this week!

In other news, I deleted my daily blog reads list because I have been using Bloglines and hadn't clicked through the links recently.  Imagine my surprise when one of my readers clued me in to the fact that a blog that used to be a knitting blog had changed into a porn blog!?!?  Oops!  So I took down the list and will be trying to get a link to my Bloglines subscriptions up in the sidebar soon.

Finally, if you are a slacker like me and haven't contributed to Claudia's MS Ride yet, please think about it!  I finally did it today, with only 5 days to spare!