Crocheted Drawstring Bag

LOOK I MADE A BAG! I'm obsessed with it. I love the fact that it's made out of 100% cotton. I love the fact that it's drawstring. It's the perfect bag for summer and I have been shamelessly using it every day!  

Here are more pics of the bag details:

I accented the bag with some DMC floss just for fun.

As you can tell, the crocheted fabric has generous holes in it and I wanted the bag to hold my items, not lose them all over town or at the beach! To solve this problem I hand-sewed a Baggu zip bag on the inside to hold my smaller personal items.

Trying to determine what to use for the drawstring was the more challenging part. Initially I triple-stranded leftover blue and white cotton yarn and crocheted a bunch of chains to use as the drawstring. But this caused a lot of friction and made it hard to pull the bag closed, so I opted for another material.

I used Neon Lacing from Purl Soho and I'm happy with the result. Makes for strong straps that support the weight of the bag quite well!

Let me know what you think! What summer bags are you currently obsessed with?

Knitted Cotton Top

Here is another thing I created during my 6 month blog hiatus. I had a solid amount of leftover yarn from my blanket and thought about maybe making a crop top with the blue yarn. I pretty much made the pattern up as I went along and figured I'd try knitting this piece top-down. Everything worked out well and I'm happy with the design, but there are some setbacks. I made this top to fit exactly as I wanted it, which means that I knit the straps a certain length and did not take stretching...and sagging as cotton does over time... into account. And since my chest is quite small, the front of the piece is actually quite revealing! This is a great learning experience and I would definitely make this top again with shorter straps.