felting on a rainy day

Fall in the great northwest has finally returned, and with it our much needed rain. Most of us who live here are grateful for the break in watering the gardens and trees. The past few years have seen less and less rain during the summer months, threatening many evergreens in our area.

For me the rain offers the chance to sit, guilt free, and knit to my heart's content! (yeah!) One of my knitting baskets had recently succumbed to a case of over-use-ous-habititosis..so I focused on making something for myself.
out came the bags of pencil roving that I have dyed and are waiting for our booth at the fair in a couple weeks!! I felt a bit like a kid in the candy store as I up-ended them on the floor. The knitting bag I had chosen to make requires 3 skeins of unspun pencil roving. I ended up choosing 2 skeins of my "oops" colors and one skein of inspiration colorway.
It's knit on size 15 needles in the round. Such a fun a gratifying fast project! Emily is checking to see if there are any mousey treats hidden inside!

One of the wonderful things about this pattern is that it falls into the class of knitting that I refer to as "mindless". I can talk on the phone, play with the cats, watch football with my husband or ponder life's great mysteries and all while knitting along on my bag. Definately a nice change of pace from the lace shawl I'm still working on where I have to hold my tongue just so to make it to the end of each row..

Here it is completed and felted (just two cycles on our good ol' front loader!) I might decide to run it through the washer once or twice more, but for today I couldn't wait to use it!
I've already started on another one in a new colorway and I'm making a couple of modifications - most important is shortening the closure length - its just a tad too long and wants to keep opening up. I might also increase the length on the shoulder strap since I enjoy having it hang a bit lower (so I can stuff it full of more yummy yarn!)

Back to knitting I go.. its still raining - hurray!