teacher gifts

It's that time of the year again. It sneaks up on us and catches us by surprise, despite our counting down to it - the end of the school year. This year it may end a couple weeks early due to some circumstances out of our control.

Either way, I've been mulling over the perfect teacher gift. I went with, not surprisingly, three open-wide pouches that have been waiting for the perfect home.
I love the bright cheery colors and the numeric highlights.

I'm really hoping they like them and I hope they have a fantastic summer. It is so deserved!

a knitterly goal

Our local yarn shop, 88 Stitches, is having a kind of knitting challenge during the next few weeks, in conjunction with the Winter Olympics.

I've decided to join in and challenge myself to knitting a Grace sweater found in Jane Richmond's Island book. It is a beautiful, classic sweater. I'll be casting on tomorrow morning. I've swatched, and measured, and tested out the lace pattern.

This project just begged for a new yarn bowl pouch. (My current yarn bowl/project bag is occupied by my "Color Affection" shawl.)

This pouch is very, very loosely styled by Anna Graham of Noodle-head's open wide pouch. I've used the dimensions for the large pouch, but everything else, construction procedure, zipper application, and so on,  have been adapted to my way of sewing pouches, which seems to be somewhat unique.

Anyways, for this pouch, I used a striped chambray style material for the base, and a couple prints by Tula Pink's Saltwater line that I absolutely adore.

For the yarn, I chose an amazing colored fingering yarn by Sweet Fiber called Super Sweet Sock in the Temperate color way.  It's a gorgeous tealish green, with a kind of aqua shimmer woven in. It's going to be great.

I love it. And I can't wait to cast on tomorrow.