5. Happy Monday.

This weekend, I met up with my knitting peeps to exchange our handmade gifts. It was my birthday, so we went to my favorite restaurant, French Meadow. I had the peaches & walnut pancake with whipped cream and maple syrup. YUMMM>

As for the gifts:
Kristy gave us all Chai spice mix and chai spiced bread:

Laura gave us all a fancy sewn bag with homemade body salt scrub (and it's scented like lemon):

This is Vanessa. I got a photo of her holding my vintage sheet pillow case bags I decided to give everyone at the last minute:

And here we all were: (see that orange beauty on my head? That's the warm knit headband that vanessa knit <3)
Here's what I made:


And now...the patterns...

For the mini gift bags, I used sugar and cream cotton in white.
Size 8 needles, set of 4 DPNs
CO 24 (8 sts on each needle)
Knit 1 round
K2tog, YF* repeat
Knit about 15 rounds (or more, if you want the bag longer)
Divide stitches onto 2 needles (12 sts on each needle)
Pull mini bag inside out
Seam bottom with a three needle bind off
Here is a video from you tube:

Turn bag back inside in
Cut some ribbon and place through holes at the top opening of the bag.
And tadah, that's it. A mini gift bag.

For the pretty crochet necklaces:
No gauge, no needle recs. Just use what you have. (I used mosschino superwash wool.acrylic)
Single chain for a length of 2 feet
Tie ends together by using the leftover tails (don't worry about being messy - you'll cover them up with the flowers)
Crochet & attach as many flowers as you'd like. I used 6 for each necklace.

Crochet flowers:
ch6, sc into first st.
ch 3, dc - repeat 6 -7 times.
That's it.
Teeny tiny flower.

Come back tomorrow for a collage of pics from what I did the evening of my birthday. By the way, it was my 36th birthday. I'm cool with it. I'm proud of it, even. So what if there's 4 years until my 40th birthday or that I am 14 years away from being 50. ;) (keeping it all in perspective!)