Now that's better!

Here is my baby booga bag after ripping it out (yes, the whole thing!) and starting from the outside of the second skein. The color progression looks a lot more natural, and I am quite pleased with how it looks. I am now knitting the I-cord. I will wait and see how much yarn I need for the I-cord before I bind of the top of the bag. As it is, it is a few rows short. I would rather the bag be a little short than having too-short handles. I really like that the handles are felted separately then attached so I have more control over their length.

I finally got on the ball to make a present for my friend's daughter that just turned... I think it's 10. The sad thing is that K's birthday was a month ago! I'm sorry! I procrastinated and waited until I could get this book from the library so I could base this little purse off of the gift bag pattern inside. I also wanted to use two colors of yarn, do you recognize the purple stripe? Does it even look purple in the picture? Well, it's supposed to be. Sorry about that!! Here are before and after pictures, with a play scissors-thing from the kids' medical kit for reference.

Nearly every time I knit now, the girl-child always wants to play with my needles and yarn. She wants to wrap the yarn around the needle, or (most of the time) just stabs the yarn with the needle. I've tried several times to convince her the yarn and needles are mine! and that she really doesn't believe me either when I tell her that I really don't need help!

So... these are for her.

The cheapest pink acrylic yarn I could find (Caron's Simply Soft, which is my favorite acrylic), and some blue size 8 Red Heart Starters knitting needles. (Yay for AC Moore and 40% off coupons!!) Hopefully this will get her out of my way a little. Hubby wanted to know if I was going to teach her how to knit. Dear, she's only 4 1/2! I told him that when she started watching what my hands were doing rather than just playing with the yarn and needles, I would start trying to teach her. I am hoping this doesn't happen before she's 7.

Here is a present for meeeee!!! Two skeins of Lorna's Laces in the Happy Valley colorway, and a mini Kacha-Kacha. My LYS sells out of this yarn really fast, so I was hoping that there would still be some left, a week after the store owner called me to let me know it was in. (Isn't she nice??) I am still somewhere around the heels on my current socks (doing two at once on dpn's, toe up), so these will be stashed. I swore I wasn't going to stash yarn. Well... here it starts!