Practical, yet alluring.

Hi again everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday this year. My post-holiday has been spent decompressing and thinking about what I'd like to do next (craft-wise).

After the insanity that was Christmas morning at my house, the realization hit me that I had nothing on the needles. That is one weird sensation. You see, I am not one of those knitters who has 8 projects going at one time. I am more inclined to take one project from beginning to end, then begin again. So when I finish a project, I get a bit stressy until I cast-on for the next. I'd kind of like to use some yarn that I have in my stash for the next project. The front-runner is 1100 yards of Black Water Abbey 2Ply Worsted in the colorway Autumn. The color is so me,  love it. I had purchased it to make a vest that is not going to happen... so I'd love to find a good use for it. I have a few ideas and I will let you know which is the winner soon!

Black Water Abbey Worsted in Autumn.

Christmas night, relaxing on the couch after the boys went to bed, I cleaned out my knitting bag. Extra yarns from the holiday sweaters, needles, patterns, etc. Everything needed to be cleared out in anticipation of the next project. During my organizing, I took a good look at my accessory case. It's felted wool and was kinda cute at one time. I had purchased it a few years ago from a yarn show vendor. Today it looks a bit tattered and frankly isn't really my style.

Not really my style, but functional.

So my next project was obvious. I was going to design my own knitting accessory case. I set pencil to paper and began my design. I knew I wanted all the same functionality of the case I already had, but with a bit more panache.

From my sketches, you can see that I am don't improvise much!

I knew I wanted to use the linen-looking cotton by French General in my fabric stash for the body of the case. I dug that out and started thinking. The fabric is beautiful, but plain. It really called for some embroidery embellishment in the design. After much sketching, I decided that I wanted to do a robin and a robin's nest. In my searching for images of robins on the internet, I ran across a link to Martha Stewart's site that had a robin embroidery template all ready for download. How lucky was I? No need to draw it out myself. I downloaded and got cracking:

Robin embroidery template courtesy of Martha.

About halfway through the embroidery, I was a little disappointed. It's more traditional than I thought initially. It's the pose of the bird more than anything. But, I might be over-thinking this. I will press on. I will finish up the embroideries, and then break out the sewing machine and sew up the interior pockets and edging. Once I get to the sewing, I am assuming that the project will fly... famous last words! My next post will (hopefully) have a finished product for you to see!

Take care,

–Cassandra