Happy Birthday to Me!

Hello friends!
My Birthday is late in the year, right before Christmas, which can be a bit of a downer at times, because everyone is too busy with Christmassy things to do anything for your Birthday, so for my most recent Birthday, instead of letting the poor timing of my birth get me down I made myself a really fabulous Birthday present, crochet, of course!

I crocheted myself a bag! I was heading out the night of my Birthday for a non-Birthday related event (which was awesome, by the way) and I REALLY wanted to use this bag, so I did have to finished it record time, and I was seriously still stitching the lining in as I was running out the door, but I did indeed finish it!

I used Scheepjeswol Cotton 8 which, despite the name is a 4 ply/Fingering weight 100% cotton yarn. I really enjoyed working with this yarn, it has a nice hand feel as you're working, it comes in LOADS of amazing colours, has a nice matte finish, and isn't splitty! So there's lots to love about it.

I didn't have a pattern for this bag, instead I reverse engineered it from a picture I had seen on Pinterest. I later discovered that the very talented and delightful Lucy from Attic 24 has a really great tutorial for the motifs used in this bag. I used the "join-as-you-go" method, which saved a lot of time because it meant I didn't have to sew any of the motifs together. I vaguely guessed the size for the lining and used some black satin that had been languishing in my fabric stash for a few years, which I sewed with my machine, then I hand stitched it into the bag. The plastic handles had also been languishing in my crafty stash for many years, waiting for this project I guess!  In total, the bag took 26 motifs to complete.

Have you ever made yourself a birthday present? What was it? :-)