I'm finished my ishbel shawl. I bound off on Thursday night, wove the ends in on Friday and this evening I gave it a little bath and pinned it out on top of a towel on my sewing room floor. Zeke and Abby supervised - miraculously no one tried to eat the pins or lie on the towel. The yarn is still deliciously soft and I still love the colour. The pattern became much more visible as I pinned it out - one of the very magical things about lace - and it looks so nice on the floor I can hardly wait to wear it.

Pattern: Linen Grocery Tote (er ... sort of) via The Purl Bee
Yarn: Louet Euroflax in Melon Mix (I think - it's been "in stash" for a while)
Size: 48 cm / 15" long
Yardage: aprox. half a skein
Hook: 3.75 mm

In the last year or so I've been seeing a lot of fabric produce bags being made up in blog world. I've been a long time convert to the canvas shopping bag but somehow I'd never gotten into sewing my own produce bags. A little while ago I realized that it was because I like to be able to see what's inside and my solution should be a crochet bag instead of a sewn one.

I must have been picking up on some crafty vibes because as soon as I thought "I need to crochet myself a produce bag" a crochet grocery tote pattern popped up on the Purl Bee. Even better, if you check the comments you'll see that Whitney offers suggestions for making a slightly smaller version of the grocery tote. I grabbed the ball of Euroflax that was hanging out in my stash (how often do you already have the perfect yarn when the project you need to make comes up?) and a likely looking hook and jumped in.

It's a funny sort of project. It starts off looking like a wonky doily, moves on to a lacy cloche hat, and finally arrives at a cool stretchy bag. I found the yarn a bit splitty but I think that is just the nature of linen. I wanted to have a drawstring so I made a few alterations to the top of the bag as follows:

Work the smaller bag, as suggested by Whitney in the comments, to your desired length.
Round 1: 2 sc in current 6 chain loop, 3 sc in each 6 chain loop around
Round 2: sc in every sc
Round 3: chain 2 (equals 1 dc), *chain 1, dc in every second sc around.
Round 4: sc in each dc or 1 chain space
Fasten off.

Make two crochet chains long enough to act as drawstrings for your bag. Thread them through your "eyelet" round. Head to the grocery store knowing you won't have to open up your produce bag for the clerk to know what kind of apples to ring in.

This bag wouldn't work for small things, like Brussels sprouts, but is great for apples. In fact it's a little bigger than it needs to be and may be ripped back a little way if I don't have enough yarn left to finish a second one

The stocking stitch portion of my Ishbel shawl is finished and I'm on to the lace now. I like working from the charts; they make it so easy to see what you’re supposed to be getting. It's so much fun to watch the lace pattern emerging. I’m a little past where I was when I took this picture and the leaves are just starting to be visible if you stretch the fabric out. I’m really looking forward to the blocking – it’s always a magical thing ... and then of course there will be the wearing.