FO Friday and Recycling a Reject

I have one FO to show but no photographic proof, yet. The Monkey socks are done and quite lovely but you'll just have to take my word for it until I can get a few free minutes during daylight hours to snap a photo. Between running kids to spring snowboarding, dance, church, annual testing, and girl's Bible study and trying to get normal chores and schooling done, I've forgotten to charge the battery on my camera.

I also have been diligently working on a recycling project I'm quite proud of. A few years ago, I used some Mission Falls Cotton I had left over from several baby gift projects to make myself the Maude tank from the In Living Color book. I love the pattern, love the yarn, love the colors. I just hated the tank on me. Once again, my inability to make a sweater that fits struck again. It was too large and the horizontal stripes made me look like a tank.

So, after reading some articles on recycling old sweaters and pondering the issue, I made a bold decision - I was going to turn Maude into a tote.

I took the shoulder seams apart and frogged the front and back down to the under arms. I put all the stitches onto a circular needle and used 15 stitches on either side of one side seam and started knitting a bottom, using SSK and P2tog at the end of each row, along each side, to join the live stitches on each side. (This is the same technique used in entrelac to join adjacent squares and the entrelac stealth project was the inspiration for this particular reclamation project.) When there were 30 live stitches remaining, I used the Kitchener stitch to seam it up, finishing off a nicely seamless bottom.

Because the bottom edge of the sweater then became top edge of the bag and it was a bit too lightweight for my purposes, I picked up stitches around the edge and started knitting a hem. I added a purl turning row and after knitting a suitable depth for the hem, grafted the live stitches down to make a substantial hem for the top.

I'm planning to use cotton webbing to make straps and have a brand, spanking new lining idea percolating in this grey matter o'mine, which should make this tote completely unique and gorgeous when finished. You'll have to stay tuned for photos.

Well, yet another day of crazy running, with co-op, an airport field trip (complete with flight instruction for Hockeyboy - so cool!), a birthday party and dance practice. When will the running end?!?