Ciao For Now

Morning All! Just popping in to say a quick hello before dashing off again. I have lots of last minute holiday thingies to be doing- mainly going and buying some shorts (tried on my old pairs yesterday to discover they no longer fit! Whoops- bring out the celery!), making those Poppy ATCs and finishing the packing.
I blame crochet entirely for these last minute activities. If I hadn't been so caught up with the hexes yesterday I would definitely have made the ATCs- and if I hadn't had a fabulous idea last night then I would definitely have finished my packing! Want to see what my brilliant and gorgeous idea was??

A pencil case!! I am taking some watercolour paints and drawing things to Portugal with me, and it always looks so untidy carrying them around in a food bag- so I decided to make my own! I can't really tell you a lot about this pencil case as I wasn't counting stitches or rows and just used odds and ends of wool that I had lying around. I can tell you that it is made using a 5mm hook with entirely double crochet stitches and that the chain loops I made at the end for the button holes are 8 chains long. I managed to get that curving finish for the lid by reducing the amount of loops I crocheted into (crochet two, miss one, crochet two, miss one etc) . It has pulled the top bit into a nice natural curve which was totally unintentional but I rather like.
It was originally crocheted as one long strip, which I then folded into thirds (the top bit being a slightly smaller third), turned right sides together and stitched up the sides to make the pocket. Turn the right way round, measure where you want the buttons to go, stitch them on and voila!!

Anyway, I must dash- lots to do!!! I will see you in about a weeks time for the holiday updates! Look out for my postcard!