Wedding presents

(The colors in these photos are off a great deal. The blue in his afghan is a much richer royal blue. The teal in her afghan is a much greener color than the photo shows.)

I'm unraveling what I'd done so far on the afghans for Daniel and Ashley. The afghans were working up smaller than I liked. Yes, there'll be a border on the afghans, but it would take one enormous border for the afghans to turn out a decent size. I've restarted Ashley's afghan with a hook two sizes larger. The rows are nearly a foot longer than before, with the same number of stitches.

I started the afghans in January, but I haven't worked on them much: 40 rows on Ashley's, 32 rows on Daniel's--about 20 hours' work being unworked now. The wedding is 14 July, but no one needs afghans in July. I'll be happy to get these done by fall.

Tuesday, my last day off, I finished a shrug I was working on. (Temps were in the 70s that day; I was sweating when I tried on the shrug.) I don't like the way it came out. It's designed to wrap around the body completely, and it feels like a fuzzy straitjacket. I can undo the whole thing and try another pattern, or I can just undo the seam on one sleeve, unravel the thing to be about 20 inches shorter, then redo the seam on the sleeve. That would give me a shrug that isn't designed to wrap around. There's no hurry, though. This can wait until after I finish the afghans.

And on Tuesday I crocheted a bookmark. It needs to be starched and blocked, and I have to get some ribbon for it, but I like the way it came out.

I finished the crocheted bag I was making. (Pictures later.) I wound up using the Cocoa-colored yarn at the top; the Majestic Mountain print yarn I used for the body of the bag didn't have much blue in it (lots more purple), so the Cadet Blue I planned to use at the top wasn't such a good match in real life. I haven't felted the bag, yet. There's a lot of yarn left over, so I'm makng a second bag. I'm making it in Tunisian knit stitch, and I'll felt both bags at the same time. I want to compare the results between the two stitches, so I'll know my preference for any future work. I suspect the Tunisian stitches will give a thicker, firmer bag. (But you can't work Tunisian in the round, so there will have to be a seam.)

Edited to add: Better color samples here...