I entered day 5 of the Stash down challenge 2011 a little bit bleary eyed.

Clooney, the newest addition to our family, woke up a little before two in the morning feeling fiercely hungry. Not being as fluent in puppy as would be useful, it took me at least 20 minutes and one middle-of-the-night tour of the yard to figure out that he didn’t just want a walk.

Once he was fed, however, he was more than happy to go for another walk and then settled back down to sleep. While I woke up in need of more rest, Clooney was ready to face the day in his new home; here he is sitting near a sofa contemplating the felted furniture coaster:

and here he is making himself right at home in the felted cat bed I made for Stripes:

Once I had once again fed and walked Clooney (this time when the sun was up), I was ready to get started on my crochet day. The first order of business was continuing work on Lianka Azulay’s crocodile stitch triangle shawl. By the time I was ready to set it aside for the day I had added four rows and used about half of a skein of the Caron dazzle aire yarn:

I was still itching to do more work on Alice Merlino’s Starling Handbag. Having mastered the foundation single crochet stitch (aka fsc) to a greater degree than I ever had, I was anxious to get started on the rest of the pattern. While I did make an error in one round, once I got the hang of Ms. Merlino’s method, it was a fairly straight forward business that resulted in this awesome rectangle:

I encourage every one to download Alice Merlino’s Starling Handbag pattern; her precise directions for the handbag not only serve as a pattern, but also give the reader/crafter insight into how another crafter organizes her thinking and creates a solution to a particular crafting problem.

This stash down challenge adventure is teaching me an awful lot about how I think and giving me insights into the creative processes of other crafters.