We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming

This would be knitting. Remember knitting? click, click, click? K1, P1? PSSO? SSK? Ringing bells? We'll take a brief break from bags, odes to bags and post this instead. A BAG!! HAH! Gotcha! No, seriously, it's an actual KNITTED bag that will have an actual pattern. I call it Ugzy but suspect the powers that be will have some words about that and change it to something cute like Striped Northampton Bag or Barrel O' Monkeys. But I like Ugzy. A lot. So much that it's on the "re-knit for me" list. Does it look at all familiar? When life hands you ugly sleeves, make a bag. I learned this with a sweater I once knit for Girl. Someone told me that you could put wool in a tumble wash and it would be safe as long as it was on cold. I can tell you that this is not always true, and that a 100% wool light blue scalloped edge pullover that you spent hours knitting can be whacked to bits, lined and given handles and buttons. This makes three bags - the body is a tote, the sleeves are each a lovely handbag. They've all been sold ($65, $35, $35 which was about three times what I paid for the yarn) or I'd prove it. When these sleeves were done I looked at them and said "You are ugly. I don't knit ugly. Therefore you must become a thing of beauty." So I hucked them in the wash and this is what came out - fully lined, complete with key pocket, with a button and a handle and everything. I have the coolest washer on earth. It's the same one that turned Girl's sweater into three bags many years ago. Only that time I cried. This time I giggled and said "Cool. A bag! And it's CUTE, too!" It will be in the next Valley Yarns catalog, and is made from Northampton - five or six skeins to get the stripes which are essential and totally worth it. AND with the miles of leftover yarn you could make mittens for your entire family and half the neighborhood as well.
I also finished the Greenwood Vest (formerly known as diamonds in my oatmeal). This is pretty. Be adorable with jeans or khakis over a t-shirt or a turtleneck. V-neckline is brought a little lower, the buttons can be "real" with buttonholes, or just stitch the placket closed and add decorative buttons - if I make it for myself that it likely the route I will take. I screwed up the buttonhole spacing somehow. I wish I could say I was drinking at the time, but it was total brain melt. This thing uses a scant 3 skeins of Northampton to complete in the smallest size, and I bet three will be all you need right up to the large - though more will be revealed on that score in the final analysis and writing. That makes the total cost of the yarn portion of the project around $15.00. Fifteen Dollars. That falls under the heading of "Why Melissa Loves to Work for Webs - Bringing Affordable, Knittable Garments to the World". It's been suggested that this is a gender neutral garment, and I think it is. It'll be sized up to 52" bust/chest. This will also appear in the fall Valley Yarns catalog, I think. Don't quote me. Ask someone who knows. I just knit.
In personal knitting news (I have some of that, too...) I finished the Lonestar sweater and hat, and now Jazz thinks I should write the pattern. That was not my plan so I took no notes. I'll take a show of hands: who thinks I should write up the Lonestar Baby Set? I could grab two more skeins and make another set, to assist my aging memory. Two skeins, color Equinox. This really was just exorcising grandma demons - there is an adjustment period in which you acknowledge that you are going to be a grandmother AGAIN even though you're baaaaaaarely 40, and everyone says you don't LOOK old enough to be a grandmother. This one's a girl. That could spell trouble. For my wallet. Poor Mr. Wonderful. All that pink waiting for me to buy it. Any-who, Katy (who is a Harry Potter expert - and me having enver read even a page of one book) assisted me in button selection for this cute little thing. There will be loops over the buttons. Now all I need is a wool-wearing, hand-washing mother to give this to, because it is not machine washable.
I scored a Hello Kitty sticker kit yesterday. I am still not sure why this amuses me so much. I think it's the little pink bow. Let me reconstruct... Girl and I were heading for work. Neither of us had eaten since morning and it was 3pm. This is always a dangerous situation. We are neither of us particularly enjoyable to be around when we're hungry. In fact, it can be downright frightening - ask Mr. Wonderful. With food in me I can navigate my way into and out of any city on earth. But hungry I throw maps to the floor, stick my lower lip out and say things like "Fine, do it yourself!" and sniffle a lot. Utterly useless. Can't even choose a restaurant if we're out. I just sit and whine "I doooon't caaare." over and over. Girl is similar, only she gets snappity snap snappy. Rip your head right off. So imagine this - we're driving down the road to the bank, both hungry. I am driving, which means I can't decide which street to take, or which road goes where, or how to find my way to a bank I've been using since it opened. Girl meanwhile is on my right, snapping at any and everyone, from me to the car to the other drivers. Not looking particularly safe is it? So I made an emergency executive decision. I pulled into...I don't know if I can say it. I can't admit it. I can't type it! I stopped at a certain...fast...food...restaurant, home of the food devil in clownish garb, place of loathing and disgust. I saw Hello Kitty smiling at me from the big sign. She was available as a prize in a...a...Not-Sad-Meal. Conveniently, Girl requested sickeningly processed and re-formed chicken parts with deep fried genetically mutant potato pieces, which are available as a Not-Sad-Meal, which includes the Hello Kitty Sticker Kit! I rewarded myself for stopping at a location I visit about once a year and then only for the Newman's Own organic coffee they (allegedly!!) spit out. She's a great little container, really, and for some reason I like her. But I still feel a little dirty about the whole thing.
Does anyone remember these guys? I really never loved them much. But now they've got this sort of cult following developing, which I find fascinating. Woobie in particular is a beloved personage. Maybe I need one myself. And I think they need a book - The Many Adventures of Woobie and Toot, like an updated Pooh, where they cavort on the subway and collect can tabs to recycle for lunch money. I think they need their own cartoon. And a lunch box.