Doris Chan, how I love your patterns

She creates patterns for beautiful, elegant, garments that manage to appear simple yet are made with a subtle complexity. In short, I admire her talent and artistry. However, having one income for 5 people, 3 of them being growing boys, I don't have the money to spend on patterns often. Her prices are reasonable for both books and individual patterns and I am tempted all the time by them. Her shawls, sweaters, dresses.. oh, my. LOL.
The best I can do is try to make a pattern of my own that ends up looking similar to hers, but it's never the same. (and never for sale, I have to add - just for me) I made a tank top in blue cotton that was inspired by her Sweet Tea pattern. I want to buy the pattern after all because while it turned out satisfactory, it's not near as good as hers.
I printed up a free pattern for a dress by Doris as well and thank goodness I did! I can't find it free anymore and I love it. I'm just waiting til I lose enough weight to look good in it :)
Time to move on from my favorite pattern maker ever and on to the rest of my projects. Tonight I nearly finished off the lace for a tablecloth edging that I've been working on. It's pretty, but simple since the cloth has a print and many colors, made in cream with a sort of wing shape tipped by a shell with a picot. Hmm, hard to describe, but if you are a member of Ravelry it's a Corticelli pattern, Narrow Edging with Picot number 696c. A pdf of an antique crochet book, I nearly got lost, forgetting what I was doing puttering around the patterns.The old ones are so pretty, I adore them.
Another project, a short one this time to get my mind off the long lasting ones. We're always running out of wash rags and dish cloths and I am always a little hesitant to use them on my face since I never know what the kids have used them for, if you have kids you know what I mean.
So far the finished ones are a blue knit of a paw print, a natural knit of hearts, a red/cream tweed knit of a spiral flower, and a crocheted zig zag. They're all different sizes and styles and colors and weights, what can I say I'm fond of variety.

I love purses

I love crochet and while I was on a mini-purse swap I fell in love with making bags and purses. Two patterns stood out to me, the Fat bag and the Derek bag. I love the look of the Lacy Leaf Satchel but I don't have money for the materials or the pattern right now.

I used an 8-ply cream colored cotton and a 2 ply cream-&-brown cotton for the body then the cream cotton alone for the handles and edging. I'm not sure yet what I plan to do as an embellishment. Maybe an oversized flower with a button center or possibly a brown ribbon I have. Then comes the lining... I have so many choices for that, I can't even begin to narrow it down yet.

The Derek bag comes later this week. I already have the dowel for the handles and plenty of yarn and lining fabrics, still searching for the right buttons. I really don't need more purses, I just love them.