I made a huge amount of progress on the bag this last week. I started taking it to work with me and doing a few rows on my lunch break. It was also Knit and Crochet night at Yarnivore this last Friday, so I got a decent amount of work done then as well.

One of the things that helped a lot was my new crochet hook. I have a lot of hooks.  One thing I didn’t have a lot of was E hooks. In fact I had one, a bamboo hook. I’ve never been too fond of my bamboo hooks that I received as a present one year. They are incredibly difficult to use for long periods of time because they are so thin and don’t have a wider flat section on the hook like most aluminum ones do. So, I end up with a cramped hand if I crochet for more than 15 or 20 minutes. I decided to spend my birthday money buying myself a new set of hooks since it meant that I could and probably would spend more time crocheting. The results speak for themselves.

Last week I had just started my third repeat of the pattern. This week I’ve finished the bulk of the bag and I’m now crocheting the handles. I finished the first handle tonight and should be done with next one tomorrow. What’s left is to sew them on and then pick out and sew in my fabric liner.

If I can’t find something in my stash that works, I’ll probably use the bag for a while without a liner. But eventually I’ll go visit some of the local shops and see if I can’t find something that will work without having to spend too much extra money.

You might also notice that the handle in the picture above doesn’t quite match the pattern. Since I had so much extra of the Silver Grey yarn left, I decided to do the center three rows in that color. As it is, I’m going to end up with three extra skeins and only one a half extra of the Azalea.

If you are interested in making this bag for yourself you can find the pattern here. And you can read my post last week that described some of the changes I made.

And if you are interested the crochet hooks I bought are the Clover Soft Touch which have a more ergonomic design than the Clover Takumi Bamboo hooks and most other aluminum hooks.