Today, in between errands (and there were a bunch of them), I made progress on my granny square sampler fat bag.

I had recently completed a second border round:

which (to my mind) only served to highlight the fact that the body of the bag was not as rectangular or square as it needed to be.

But I did some strategic frogging, removed the single row of gold double crochet stitches that bordered Square A-2, and then put everything back together again:

The result was a squarer/more rectangular shape that was ready to be lined. Needle and thread at the ready, I got to work:

While I was running one of the day’s errands (picking my son up after school after a band commitment was rescheduled) I realized that it was the day after Halloween which reminded me of Halloween last year, shortly before which I made a yarn purchase from my son’s trumpet teacher and came into possession of this munificent stash:

As a direct result of that purchase, I spent all of November 2011 working on projects that used the yarn from that stash.

I started by using the Purl bee’s crocheted stash basket pattern to make this stash bag to house some of the stash:

I made this Queen Anne’s lace scarf (here is a link to the pattern) for my mom:

As well as this Starling Bag designed by Alice Merlino (aka Future Girl) which as it happens, still needs to be lined:

I made all kinds of cool things that I would not have made without the challenge of using what I had purchased

Once I have my amazingly fun granny square sampler fat bag finished, this year’s stash down challenge will be to finish all of the projects I started during my 2011 stash down challenge but did not finish and any other UFOs (Unfinished Objects) that I have accumulated along the way.

That just might keep me busy until December.