Sunday in the park with Chris and the Fish

We had a gloriously beautiful Memorial Day Weekend. The past few years we've had rain so this was a great change. Sunday I had planed to go to the movies. I rethought that idea and packed my knitting, a blanket, a chair and all the other necessities and went to a local park.

I found myself a spot of shade, laid out my blanket, fired up my MP3 player and people watched for a while. Then I took out my knitting...

What is that? That looks nothing like the lace Fish shawl you should be working on! You just cast that onto those needles. What are you doing????

Oh look - pretty! Buttercups!

Well, at least the fish shawl made the trip with me. It is in the special bag I bought to tote it around. But see, I went to a sale and I got this really great deal on Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed and it was just calling out to be made into a French Market Bag, so I started on it because you can't have enough bags - ever - in my book.

This is the progress as of yesterday. I'm making it much deeper than the pattern calls for and thought a jaunty stripe pattern would be nice. Besides black and pink scream FRENCH. Just 2 more inches in black and then onto the handles.

I'm happy with the bag on the whole, but I'm praying that the handles won't end up as rough as the wool is after felting. It is the most coarse, itchy yarn and sheds little tiny fibers all over. Thank goodness I took it to the park (and been knitting it on my deck in the evenings) because my carpet would have a layer of little black ick all over it. I even had little fiberetts stuck in my contact one night. I can't imagine knitting anything that one would wear out of this yarn. It's the yarn that wool haters mean when they say it's itchy and scratchy.