More KALs and a weirdly-written pattern . . .

So The Yarn Attic hosts oodles and oodles of KALs, which is absolutely wonderful!  I've got a couple of yarns wish-listed from them, and my stash may grow again after Lent!

In the mean time, however, I'm enjoying the impetus to work on gifts, or things that have sat on my Ravelry queue for way too long.

So, I started a few different projects for their 'Hop in It KAL' , (more on those later, I hope!) but the one I really want to mention is my Sundance Notions Bag.  I'm using the leftovers of Spud & Chloë Sweater from the Pjyama Shorts.

 I just started the cast on.  And it's not bad so far:

I wanted a small pouch/bag to hold my extra notions/needles/hooks, once I finish my felted Knitting Bag, since the knitting bag doesn't have any inside pockets.  (And I just noticed I haven't blogged about my knitting bag despite it being on the needles for a while! Whoops!  I'll try and fix that soon!)

Anyway, so I found the Sundance Makeup Bag pattern from the Classic Elite Yarns Web-Letter.  If you're on Ravelry, it's also at this Ravelry Link.

The pattern is relatively simple, nicely textured. . . but oh man, is it weirdly written.  It's written in sections, but the sections don't progress in order.  So 'oh, yeah, now you go over here to read this part of the pattern, and then you double back for the next section.'  There are lots of little notes and addendums (For example, I missed that you're supposed to slip the first stitch on every row), and there are also abbreviations that aren't defined. (Another example:  I -think- EOR is "End of Row", but I can't find a definition of that anywhere in the pattern).

That being said, once you figure out the pattern weirdness, it actually doesn't look like too hard a knit, and if you browse through the project pages on Ravelry, you'll see that a lot of people actually have re-written out the pattern and simplified the way it's presented.  So if you do get stuck, it looks like you'll have lots of support. 

It also looks like this knits up pretty fast.  It's only 31 stitches wide in worsted-weight yarn, so it should finish up pretty quickly.