After four glorious, errand-free days, I finally ventured into the outside world.

After clearing the snow from my windshield, I headed for the post office, which, as it happens, is right by a fabric store.

The fabric store caters to quilters, so the array of choices was staggering. How, I wondered, was I going to make a choice? After walking past what must have been thousands of bolts of fabric, I settled on this:

While the colors in the fabric are more muted than the colors of the yarn I used, it has a definite joy about it and the circles are not only playful, but echo the donut theme.

Here is fabric with the body of the bag for which it is intended:

The next step after completing my fabric purchase and the other errands was to wash the fabric.

While I was waiting for the fabric to run through the wash and then dry, I got started on another project that had caught my eye. A “Get Your Granny On” bag that is the creation of Valerie Whitten, crocheter and all around renaissance woman, who has a blog called Vallieskids. In her how-to for this project, (which you can find here), she shows several takes on bags she has made from 3 to 4 granny squares that are anywhere from 6 to 8 rounds.

Unable to decide which sort of granny square I wanted to make, I made what I think of as a mash-up of a traditional granny square (clusters of 3dc separated by a ch-1, except for corners where there are 2 3dc clusters separated by a ch-2) and a variation on the traditional granny which is used in both the ever popular Babette and the equally popular Inga’s Haekelbeutel. In this version of the granny square, the corners are composed of 2dc, ch-2, 2dc, and then a dc is made into each dc and ch-1 space across to the next ch-2 corner where the process is then repeated.

This is how far I had gotten after two hours of crochet, punctuated with interruptions to finish laundry and other household chores:

By the time the sun had begun to set, I had gotten this far:

Since I took this last photo, I have finished all three squares and have joined them, adding a row of single crochet around the edge.

Tomorrow is a new day, and my hope is that I finish at least one of these bags.