Simple Things

Every year, my kids' school has a "Spring Fling" and there is a huge raffle.  Something like 59 items/baskets this time.  You can donate individual items and/or contribute to your kids' classroom's theme basket.  My youngest had a theme of "Water activities" so I thought I do a crochet beach tote, great for not holding all the sand from the toys!  And, I also threw in a water bottle holder.  I forgot to buy a bottle of water to put in it, but I tossed in a business card and wrote a bit on the back.  My plan was actually to sew a patch on the bottom part of the strap.  My kids' school is Captain Michael VandenBos PS.  Michael was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force's demonstration team, the Snowbirds.  I also knew Michael in high school!  There is/was an Air Cadet troop that met at the school.  Their crest was similar to the Snowbirds crest, with "VandenBos" underneath.  The conductor of the community band I'm in is involved with Cadets and I saw one day he had this patch on his bag.  I asked him and he said he could sell me a couple for $10 each, and that they're hard to find now.  So, I bought two.

And hid them so well I couldn't find them.

The little circle is one of my TracyKM Designs tags.

The bottom of the bag was annoying me--I was using a smaller hook than I should have, to add some body, and my circle wasn't laying flat.  So I had to redo it with fewer stitches.  And it takes forever to do that base in single crochets!  Then I do a row through the back loop, to form the turning ridge, then a few rounds in single crochet, then a few rounds in half double crochet, then about halfway up in double crochet.  Then I switched to 1 dc, 1 ch (skipping a dc).  This speeds it up.  As I was going up, I also started doing some decreases...I split the bag into quarters and did two decreases every row, alternating front and back and sides.  At the top, I switched to single crochet in each dc and in each ch1, and then back to several rows of single crochet.  Then the strap is 12 sc wide.  I got this width from a free Bernat pattern I've done before.  However...I didn't read that it should have been decreased down to 8 sc!!  The strap seemed to take forever, LOL, but the sc really helps prevent stretching (I've had that problem with the water bottle holders I made with dc straps).

It's a good size bag!  I had quickly popped into Michaels to get the cotton yarn, and got the huge ball of Handicrafter.  I had a 20% off coupon, but the cashier used a 50% off coupon!  Score!  It used 198gr!

Yarn In:  400gr + 2176gr = 2576gr
Yarn Out: 198gr + 4149gr = 4347gr
Balance: 1771gr more USED than bought
Costs: $8.49 + $117.42 = $125.91 /156 days = $0.81/day