Hello! It’s been a long time since I knit anything because I spent most of 2010 sewing handbags or not doing anything creative at all! These are some booties for a fetus. It’s about to turn into a baby any day now. It’s the first baby item I’ve ever knit and it went by really quickly. Even though the yarn isn’t quite unisex, it doesn’t scream out “IT’S A GIRL” so I bought these little pink bow buttons and now these booties are appropriately feminine though after a conversation with the father I feel TERRIBLE for forcing gender norms upon an infant. While you don’t have to worry about things fitting a baby flatteringly (or being too big, because the baby can just grow into it), you do have to worry about whether the buttons are secured to the booties enough to prevent the baby swallowing the buttons so that you don’t end up murdering a baby. Knitting for babies can be greusome!

So a little bit about the fetus! It belongs to my good friends Tony and Davida. Tony and Davida also have a toddler whom I have babysat and yelled at almost 12 months ago and he is still shy around me!

This yarn is Knitpicks Sock Memories in a discontinued colorway named Paper Dolls. It’s really only good for small-scale things, like baby booties or fingers for these fun gloves I made in college. Otherwise the color repeats get really irrelevant.

The pattern is Saartje’s Booties, or as I like to call them, Sartre’s Booties! Hell is other babies, am I right? I knit the small size (31 stitches) per the pattern, but got confused as to how to knit the straps. I knit them on backwards at first, and ended up not going by the pattern. Also, instead of casting on ten stitches per strap I cast on 16 and sewed them down instead of giving them button holes and making them functional. I don’t know anything about babies but I know your time becomes very important when you have one, so instead of having to button up four straps you just slip the booties on, which is why I made the straps a little longer.

Hello I have finished another handbag. It’s a simple tote with an amazing lining and embroidery! I wanted to vary this handbag by my last two but was limited by not having enough materials. For instance, instead of having two handles on the wide face of the bag, I would have loved to have one longer handle go from end to end but I wasn’t sure if I had a length of the lining fabric long enough to accomplish this but I want to try it out so there is a chance you will see a FOURTH HANDBAG, especially since one of my bags had a maple syrup tragedy. The bag is for my best friend Natalie who always sends me care packages and I love her. She is responsible for some of my best memories since high school.

I know everyone is wondering if the zipper is crooked; the answer is yes! Since I didn’t have a lot of material I did the best I could to disguise it. Aside from this flaw, I am happy with the way the bag turned out

I sewed another handbag, this time for my Aunt Shelly, because she is enthusiastic about my hobbies. This one is a little bit larger than the last one and rectangular, not trapezoidal. Also my finishing techniques got a lot more polished and I’m very happy with what I learned. The outer fabric is a print I ordered from reprodepot.com in 2007 and the inner fabric and handles are from a top sheet. The bag is in a similar style as my last bag with a small pocket on the outside but this time there is no divider, just one pocket on the inside. It still offers more space though, because it’s bigger overall. Also, I hid the seam allowance between the inner fabric and the interfacing, so technically this bag is reversible though I don’t see why one would want to hide the retro pink fabric. I hope nobody is going to roll their eyes if I make another handbag, because I am currently in the process of doing so.

The zipper is set in rather than joining two pieces of fabric. The inner fabric matches the zipper fabric color.

I sewed the handles with zig-zag stitch because it made them feel sturdier. Also I secured the handles between the outer fabric and the inner fabric such that you don’t see the unfinished edge of the handles on the inside edge of the bag. You can also see here that the lining is brown, but it’s not very exciting.