Princess Starshell has a new home

Here is my entry for the whiplash competition over at Whipup. My parents are taking me, Seth and my sisters and brother to the beach this weekend, for some swimming and some fishing. I take crochet with me every where, class, work, to the movies, and of course the beach! I dont think i will take the crochet fishing though, Princess Starshell doesn't need a smelly blanket. So I wanted to make a fun new crochet bag that looked like a beach bag! I think I accomplished that with these fun bright colors!

Here is a side view of the bag, its about 4 inches deep. The reason i think this bag belongs in the skill category is because of all the modifications and upgrades I made to a basic square bottom tote. There is a large pocket across the front of the bag for holding trashy magazines that you only read on vacation. There are two narrow pockets on each side of the bag for pens, or extra crochet hooks. On the inside i made a fairly deep slash pocket to hold a pair of scissors, or anything else that doesn't need to tangle up the yarn.

And here is the afghan in her happy new home, you can see the hook poking out of the slash pocket. I'm afraid my afghan may outgrow the bag by the end of the weekend, she's getting big, i'll have to post updated pictures soon.

Princess Starshell Has a Blanket!

Okay, actually, the afghan I'm working on right now is just called a Star Shell afghan, but doesn't that sound like some crazy friend of Sailor Moon or a lost Nintendo princess being held captive by Bowser in his fiery dungeon of doom that Mario and Luigi just totally like, forgot about?

I thought so.

First things first:

I'm working from this pattern from citiusa.com, except I've doubled the pattern, which will make my finished afghan six feet wide and six and a half feet long. I'm a tall chick, I like my feet to be covered.

I'm using some awesome Simply Soft Caron brand yarn, and it is working out just perfectly. This brand comes in tons of colors, it's washable, it's super cheap, just $1.99 for six ounces, and it truly is Simply Soft.

I come from a long line of crocheters... well, my grandmother and my mom both crocheted... is three people considered a long line? In the grocery store it is when the people in front of you have full carts and at least one screaming child each and you only have a bag of limes and a loaf of bread and you're already steamed they didn't just let you go first, but then they pull out a wad of coupons and OH MY GOD a handful of change and that's when the vein in your forehead starts throbbing but stabbing people in grocery stores is so last week, so you have to content yourself with the weapons of the passive aggressive; tapping your foot, rolling your eyes, and sighing loudly approximately every fifteen seconds, and... where the hell was I? Oh right, grandmother. Mom. Both crocheted. I do too.

The point is that crocheting is tied up in associations with a lot of good things in my head, so doing it, although it takes a while to finish a project, is actually really relaxing and fun for me. Plus it's so easy to learn, and just like riding a bike, you have to actively try to forget how to do it, and it's easy to pick up and put down, so you can just grab spare moments between Roseanne reruns and cleaning the litterbox, and knock out a star shell or two. My goal is a stripe a day, and if I stick to it then I've only got forty five days left, which means when I'm finished it will kind of still be summer, which means that my color choices will still be appropriate. Hooray!

You can check out my progress here, I'm about a third of the way done:



and see a close up of the detail here: