I had a full memory card of photos to deal with, and while I managed to get them on the computer today, I just couldn't be arsed to organize and upload them. So in the meantime, here's what I've knit over the past three days: Sophie.

I knit Sophie a couple of years ago but I recently threw it out. It wasn't great. When Freakgirl was here last weekend, I loved hers and had the urge to knit it again. The yellow bag on the right is my full-sized Sophie, knit from one skein of Patons Classic Wool. I felted it in my front-loader, the first time I've used it for felting; it took a little bit longer than my mom's top-loader but it felted just fine. I ran it through a short hot wash twice with three pairs of jeans.

The little red bag is for a special little friend of mine. I know her favourite colour is red, and I'm hoping the burgundy of the bag will be good enough because I didn't have enough bright red. Anyway, I pretty much made the bag at about 75% of the original size, and it used up just over half of a skein of the Classic Wool.

The modifications I made were pretty straightforward. I cast on 29 stitches instead of 39, and I knit for 25 rows to create the garter stitch bottom. I picked up 12 stitches on the sides and 29 on the long end. I made my decreases every 8th row instead of every 10th, and I only decreased 4 times instead of 5. Then I knit 5 rounds even before casting off. With the smaller bag, you'll end up with only 4 stitches at each side where the straps are to be knit, so I increased 2 stitches at each end during the bind-off row. I knit the straps to about 18 inches in length, then grafted them to the other side as in the pattern.

The finished mini-Sophie is 6" wide at the base, 5" wide at the opening, 4.5" from top to bottom, 2.5" deep at the base, and the handle is 6.5" from the opening of the bag upward.

Now, look at my cats. Jeremy took this the other day.