About a bazillion years ago I found this bag for about 1.99 at Urban Outfitters’ bargain basement. You know, the part of the store that you wander through, wondering who actually could pull off wearing that pair of mesh pants, those shirts with the puffy sleeves that goes down to your knees, or that plaid beret thing. But then you look around, an oh yeah… These skinny, pierced, dyed hair hipster people could.

Now that I think of it, though, the bargain basement for hipsters-much-cooler-than-I is probably the same place that one could eventually find Chris March’s creepy human hair creations from Project Runway. (Anyone else see that? Yikes.) [via]

Anyway, one of the only things I’ve ever come out of that store with was this bag. And I love it to pieces!

It is currently home to all my knitting projects that I’ve abandoned set aside for a less busy time, as well as my homemade needle roll and zippered notions pouch for all the accessories:

The needle roll was… honestly? One of my first sewing projects (that wasn’t curtains) since a pair of tight red stirrup sweatpants from 7th grade. Yup, a proud moment in sewing history. If you weren’t sure about my social status back then, this should give you a quick clue. I’m not entirely sure why stirrups were involved in my pattern of choice, and why I thought I could wear them, but I know I was excited… until I made them. And I discovered that were too short. And if you know anything about stirrup pants, this brings discomfort to a whole new level.

How did we get onto stirrups? This is supposed to be about my illustrious knitting bag. Here’s the needle roll all spread out, filled with a few useful needles and accessories.

This sewing bag is the inspiration for my most recent handbag and started my seemingly unending affection for the straight wooden handles.

Upon further inspection, it looks like I’m not the only one with affection for the handles:

Daisy sez – “What? I like the wooden handles for chewing on!”

Can you see the bite marks? She’s like a little vampire-cat with those teeth of hers! This particular habit of hers is enough to drive me nuts! Ah well, wooden handles are too hard to resist!

And then you reflect on the “meal” you last made that ended in piles of bowls, splatterings of water, flour, tomato sauce on the walls, and stuff everywhere? And how it tasted bad, to boot? And then you feel sad because you’re never going to be as neat and perfect and pre-chopped as the people on TV? (Well, OK, actually I don’t feel so sad, because I’ve watched Next Food Network Star, and I know those poor suckers burn their mouths on their ill-seasoned concoctions while trying to pretend that it doesn’t taste like rubber).

I promise none of you will ever leave here feeling that way. Behold my latest mess of a failure:

It all started out a little suspect. The yarn store in which I discovered this lovely shade of Malabrigo worsted-weight is a lovely one indeed, and not far from where I work. When I picked up the yarn, I recognized the strong smell of vinegar, which I dislike immensely. Since vinegar is used to set the dyes in yarns, this is not entirely a surprise to smell at a yarn store, but this was Strong in only a way vinegar can be. Anyway, I just figured it would go away over time and set out to knit a simple hat, like many I’ve made before. After all, I’d just lost my very adorable fleece-lined winter hat with the little boingy things on top, and needed a good sturdy and warm winter replacement. So I whipped up the hat and all was well. It looked like it had promise as it was in progress:

Problem number 1: It was enormous.

How did that happen? I’ve made hat upon hat for myself, and this one’s big?

Problem number 2: No matter how long it lived out in the great wide world of vinegar-free air, it still reeked.

So I thought – Hey, wouldn’t it be a fantastic idea to soak this in some warm water with some mild laundry soap, like I’ve done to so many other knitted things? And I could even shape it while it dries! Maybe I could make it appear a little smaller than it is! Wow, I’m so smart!  Even in hindsight, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but in truth the hat soaking went very poorly. It grew two sizes, went all saggy and loose on me, and looked horrible. And it still smelled like vinegar!
So, onto plan B: the fleece!

Guess what? If you try to make a really big hat smaller with a lot of bulky fleece, it looks just, well, like you tried to make a really big hat smaller with some bulky fleece. To seal the deal, I had an uncontrollable spontaneous fleece cutting episode *after* the fleece was already in the hat, resulting in nothing but misshapen disaster and handstitching nightmare.

A knit hat is like the mac and cheese from a box of the knitting world and I screwed it up. But I’m OK with it because I found my old winter standby a few days later: