At the end of October, I made an amazing acquisition to my stash. (You can see it here).

The stash is a hodge-podge of yarns that had belonged to my son’s trumpet teacher’s mother. She suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and it has been many years since she was able to craft, and while I wanted the yarn, I also wanted to honor (as best I can) the intentions of this fellow crafter.

To that end I came up with a stash down challenge to myself wherein I am devoting the entire month of November to creating purposeful (and hopefully aesthetically pleasing) objects from this stash.

Yesterday, as I worked on a black and white scarf, this bright yellow yarn got my attention:

The yarn is described on the label as “heavy rug yarn,” and while carpetbaggers are none to popular, carpetbags (or at least bags large enough to be carpetbags) seem to have found favor in the modern world; with that in mind, I decided that this rug yarn would be the perfect medium for my execution of the large Starling Handbag.

Using a 5.0 mm hook, I initially used a foundation single crochet (fsc), but I wanted something less stretchy, so I unraveled the 27 fsc stitches and went with a more traditional start.

After making a chain that was 28 stitches long, I worked my first single crochet into the back ridge of the second chain from the hook. From there I continued in the same fashion with the remaining 26 stitches. When all was said and done, I had the requisite foundation chain composed of 27 single crochet stitches. As can be seen here, it would not lay flat:

From that point forward, however, I followed Ms. Merlino’s directions as written, and before it was time to head to Marsh Woodwind to get the mouthpiece unstuck from my son’s trumpet, I had completed what is the base of the large Starling Handbag:

Using the bulkier weight yarn and the 5.0mm hook will result in a handbag larger than specified in the pattern, but I think that the bag has the potential to be spectacular and honor the original crafter’s intent to create an object that is both memorable and useful.