Recently ..............

.............. we went looking for tall ships. L had heard on the radio that both the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain were docked in San Francisco. They were supposed to sail on the Bay during the day and there would be tours in the late afternoon.
So, being retired and not having anything to do that particular day, off we went to look.
We drove to Berkeley first and walked the length of the pier hoping to see them sailing on that side of the Bay.

Statue across the street from the entrance of the pier.

The end of the pier.

No tall ships in sight, so we drove into San Francisco. We knew which pier to look for and were lucky to find a parking space. And, yes, there was one of the tall ships:

The Lady Washington, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame. Turns out, the two ships were not sailing together and obviously weren't out on the Bay that day.

A small miscalculation

So, last week, I made this ingenious sock sack from a pattern on Craftsy. Even though there's quite a bit of detail there, it came together easily and pretty fast. Would have been faster if I hadn't had a couple of small mishaps.
Anyway, I liked the way the drawstring bit is done, so I thought I'd make a slightly larger version and went ahead and recalculated. I multiplied everything by 1.5 and ended up with a humongous bag.

Here it is - this one easily holds 5 balls of yarn, maybe even 6, I didn't fill it completely when I got ready to take pictures. It's just a bag, no divider, no tabs.
And here are the two bags together for comparison:

Big difference, right?
I'll try again, this time multiplying by 1.2 - maybe.

Project bags

These are birthday presents, but, since the birthday girl doesn't read my blog, it's safe to put them up here:

 

I made the bag in two different sizes.

Trying to get a decent picture was a challenge again. The ones taken inside were just plain bad, no matter how much I fiddled with PSE, it wasn't until I dragged everything outside, that the colors became true. 

The fabrics came from my embarrassingly large stash of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

The pattern can be found here. The free tutorial is for the smaller version.

Sock bag

I've been sewing project bags this week - pictures to follow soon. Yesterday, while surfing, I came across a pattern on Craftsy for a sock sack for people who knit two socks at once. That's not me, so this one will find a new home soon.
But, the idea is just brilliant IMHO, you sew a bag with a divider inside and two little tabs just above the divider, thread your yarns(s) through those and - voilà - you can knit two socks at the same time without getting your yarn tangled up.

From the outside, the bag looks cute, but not that special.

Fold down the cuff and it gets more interesting. That's also what you're supposed to do to stabilize the whole thing when you're knitting.

Here's a closer look at the divider and the two tabs. Brilliant, right?