ok so I have finished the other handle and as I sat back to look at what I had done I was not pleased. The pale green at one end seemed longer than the other. After much checking and double checking there is no question about it, the handles are wrong. Both of them. One more than the other.

The pattern calls for the handles to be knit in halves and grafted at the center rather than knit as one and grafted to the bag. Still the two halves are mirror images so it should have been simple enough to work out. Or so I thought, but apparently not. I knit the pale green until I had decreased to 17 stitches then changed on the next row to dark green. For the first handle once I passed the mid-line and started increasing to match my decreases I changed colour (back to the pale green) as soon as I had 17 stitches on the needle rather than at the end of the 17 stitch section (ie 3 rows early). The second bag I was clever enough to remember that the decrease to 17 stitches was worked in the pale green and then the switch to dark green was made. So for the second strap I changed to the pale green before increasing to 17 stitches, 4 rows early. Only one row earlier than the first handle, but it seems to have made the difference between noticing the mistake or not.

The question is, will anyone else notice? Jesse reckons they look fine. Felting will change things too. Should I unpick at the colour change, add a few rows of dark, remove a few of pale and graft it back together or should I just leave it well enough alone? So far I have made a habit of fixing almost every mistake I have noticed but I don’t know if this one is worth it, what do you think?

I seem to be running a day behind here… yesterday’s news is that I took the two untouched balls I had left over from the Big Bad Baby Blanket back to the shop to swap them for a different colour. I had 1.5 balls each of the Alabaster and Ricepaper left and a single ball of the Quartz, a little over 4 balls in total. Unfortunately the Quartz ball had been partially pulled out and re-wound so it couldn’t be returned. My plan was to swap the two paler balls that I could return for two more balls of Quartz and then make a baby sweater, moslty purple with a stripe of the two paler colours somewhere along the way. That was the plan… Then I saw this:

You may notice that there are actually three balls there, I couldn’t help myself, I bought an extra ball. Now that I have had some time to sleep on it I have a new plan. My one ball of quartz and the leftovers of Ricepaper and Alabaster Silkroad Aran are going to become hat to go with the BBBB, I dont’ really want to do another large project with the same yarn/colours right now. Of course that frees me up to do something all new with the lovely new “Boheme” yarn. As it happens it is a very good thing that I have a new plan because this yarn is NOT Aran Tweed as both the shopkeeper and I thought it was, but DK Tweed which would not have knitted up nearly so well with my Silk Road Aran remnants. Finding that the new yarn was DK weight was very pleasing all round, not only did it help enable this new plan for the remnants of my BBBB, it is also much better suited to a cardigan for Isabelle. Needless to say the yarn store is holding another 4 balls for me to go pick up at my earliest convenience.

Oh and I do have some news from today after all. A pair of 6.5mm Crystal Palace circs came in the post today so now I am ready to start working on the Booga Bag the second the Phildar Hooded Jacket is done. Wonder if that will be enough motivation to see me knock of the rest of the sleeves and the fronts this weekend, so far it has been a very quick knit.