25 April--And now it’s completely done! I lined it in silk taffeta. Just a tube gathered at the bottom. I sewed the bottom of the lining to the bottom of the purse, and then whipstitched the top of the lining to just below the leaves. The bottom sewing keeps the bottom from drooping--it’s heavy because of the beads!

The cord is made from two lengths of green and one of yellow twisted together. The ends are knotted and then loose, and a loop of beads (all I had leftover, except for the ones that were dropped!) attached to each end.

I’m waiting for more pictures before I hit completed :)

24 April--Knitting is done! It’s currently drying on a can of spray starch. Just cords and lining to make now!

23 April--So close! I’m doing leaves, not spikes, at the bottom. It was very easy to do. I left off at a half repeat, did row nine in green, and then just kept going with the second half of the spike pattern--the k1 yo k6, s1 k2tog psso--and didn’t do the three plain rows or the switch. The beads are on the k2tog. Once you do a few rows, it goes back to the leaf pattern.

For my first row of green, I reversed the knitting and knit it right side out, so that the color join was on the inside. Based on another purse on my wish list, they didn’t really care about that, but the Kyoto pineapple that I took the leaf inspiration from didn’t show the color join, so reversing it was. I thought about purling (like in the other pattern mentioned in these notes) but reversing the row seemed more appropriate.

I had planned on 7 1/2 repeats, but I got dangerously close to out of thread at 6 1/2. Thankfully I liked the size there, so it worked out. I probably would’ve stopped there had I been paying attention to the size anyway :)

8 April--It looks like a pineapple! I’m calling the restart date the start date. The, uh, practice, doesn’t count.

I’m much happier this time around. It has little spikes! And no obvious mistakes!

13 March--And then that happened. OK, so I think I shifted the stitches and the yellow came out wrong and the part where you knit five to start instead of six? Logically, that would mean the stitch before. But no, I did the stitch after and well, I tried to take it out to the green and well, that happened. No huge thing! There were a few blips in the leaves I wasn’t crazy about, and I thought it might have been a bit long for its width. I think I’m going to go with the 240 stitches I thought of the first time I figured out the size.

I really hope that was a mistake because I’d hate to have taken out 31 rows for nothing!

That’ll teach me to do set up rows when I’m tired :)

Casting on again tonight!

4 March--We’re counting this as the start day, since this is the day I started without making a stupid mistake (I counted to 5, not 6, and messed up knitting back).

We’re off to a start, though not one without its problems. I think I cast on an extra stitch, and I think I dropped one of the last knit two together which I think unraveled to the base, which really means nothing as it was a little loose there anyway and all I need to do is tighten it up when I weave in the last end.

I cast on 208 stitches. I’m planning on switching to the leaf pattern near the bottom. Oh, and I’m beading it. I also want to put beads on the leafy bottom like the one in the Kyoto Costume Institute. I’m actually using a mix of this pattern, this pattern, http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pine-apple-bag , and probably changing it a bit. I already changed the stitch count!

It’ll be a little bit before I really work on it, as I need to finish the little bird pinball first :)