The countdown has begun!

At 2100 tonight a hush will descend across the land as knitters, crocheters and fibre crafters all across the world pick up their tools of choice and jump into a frenzy of project commencement... oh and apparently the telly should be pretty good too, some sporting event or something starts :)

Well I might not quite have won my maillot jaune during the Tour de Fleece (life won on two days that weren't the rest days, though given I spun on both of those I kind of did spin the right number of days?!?!) but I did achieve my first goal of finishing spinning the silk I need to knit Tethys.

I've got two of the skeins caked up and ready go. A quick note on which, I decided against using the ball winder for these as they are just so slippery. My winder is in fairness a cheap one, with a tendancy for the yarn guide to collapse resulting in the yarn getting caught in the mechanism. Not so bad when it is commercial yarn, or even hardy handspan sock yarn. My nice soft silk though, not on your life was I going to risk that!


In the spirit of both preparation and procrastination I also decided that this really did need a project bag of its own too. I'm going to be dragging this everywhere I go for the next two weeks and it is a pale colour so it needed to go in something, and I'm enjoying making the bags at the moment. This though was going to rapidly outgrow any of my little sock bags. A new plan was needed.

I don't think I've mentioned it, but a month or so ago I bought a Namaste Monroe bag for work... and now general life! It is perfect! The front zip pocket holds my valuables (iPad, phone, purse) while the back non-zip pocket has everything else in it (pencil case, notebooks, hand gel... you get the picture). This leaves me the middle half height pocket for whatever projects I'm schlepping around that week. Normally I have a spindle and a set of socks in there, in bags of course, and I tend to throw the iPod in too as it is zipped up but still really easy for me to get to. The obvious answer to my bag problem therefore was to make the largest bag I could, whilst still enabling it to fit in the Monroe.

As you can see it is a bit of a wierd size when it is on its own, about 37cm long, 14cm tall and 9cm deep. This though fits that centre pocket of the Monroe perfectly when I have all my other stuff in it too. As you can see from the next picture, this also perfectly fits full cakes of yarn.

The cakes on their own fill maybe 2/3 of the height, so I've still got plenty of space on top of them to put in the WIP itself when I get started. Given it was daft o'clock when I got this finished last night I stopped when I finished the seams. I kind of feel that I want to go back and put some extra pockets on the inside of the bag though. Initial thoughts are a longish pocket on one side to hold a folded pattern out of the way, maybe some tip sized ones on the opposite side so I can have a couple of different ones with me, for those patterns that change part way through, and maybe some little bar type sections that I could hang some stitch markers on. I'll have to see how I get on though before making any decisions.

In other crafting news, I still need to ball up some the "This one's Ewenique" Footsie I bought from Yarnscape two separate 50g cakes. That will be my tiny carry project for the Games and will hopefully live in the pyramid bag. I'm also heading off to my parents for a weekend at some point soon and would really like to have made a spindle project bag for the top whorl that Dad made me. It'll probably be very similar to the box bags, though a little smaller in height and depth, with a carry handle but also a loop for a carribina to clip to. That way I can clip the bag to my trousers etc pull the zip down a little and use it as a fibre storage while spinning. I get the feeling I should have joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted rather than Team Yarnscape for this one!

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