I just added this sweet summer clutch pattern, the Picnic Purse, to my Ravelry Store and Etsy Shop.

PDF Pattern, $5.50

In case you couldn’t tell, this design was inspired by summer picnics. One of the things I loved about living in NY was going to central park and lazing about with friends for a potluck picnic! It’s just getting warm enough to do that in Bozeman, too. The yarn I used (Cascade 220 Heathers) reminded me of a picnic basket and I used some silky stash yarn to add the extra summery flowers. The pdf is a whopping 8 pages long and includes step by step photos for lining the bag and inserting the zipper. I’m not fond of knit/crochet bags without a lining and closure (unless they are totes) so I wanted to include all of that information for interested parties.

I had some wonderful pattern testers this time around, and if you’re on Ravelry you can see their variations on the Project Page.  I thought it was extra cool how international my testing team was- I had a tester each  from Canada, Sweden, India and the USA. I love the internet!!

I also wanted to show you this rendition I made with my Lacy Shells Hat Pattern. I squeaked it out with one skein (109 yds) of Noro Silk Garden. I love how it worked up and contrary to what I thought, the yarn does seem bearable to wear (and I’m a no-itch snob!). I’ll be teaching this pattern in my beginning crochet class at the yarn shop, if any locals are interested.

PDF Pattern, $3.50

I have a couple more finished projects to show you this week. It seems that all of a sudden this has turned into a bona fide crochet blog!  I’m still trying to think of my next crochet project, but don’t worry, I still sew buy fabric.  I struggle with wanting to design more patterns and wanting something totally mindless. It’s important to me to balance designing with making things from other people’s patterns so I can still keep my “hobbies”, see.  There are so many more wonderful crochet patterns now than there were even a few years ago, and I can’t help but try them out.