I’ve been thinking about colors. I’m not sure I know the answer to the question whether I am the one who chooses a particular color or colors pick out me. Sometime I can’t see the difference. It’s so easy and pleasing to play with colors. They’re my friends.

This little bag which I named “Blooming garden” I made using “Lily Pad” granny squares. In original pattern, which you can find here, on the Karen’s lovely Colour in a simple life blog, they are actually hexagons. I don’t particularly like hexagons, but I liked those extremely textured flowers very much, and wanted to use them for the bag. That’s the reason why I transformed them into squares.

I followed the instructions until the last row, and then, instead of the last row I added the following: chain 3 (it’s actually dc), dc into the next stitch, hdc into the next stitch, single crochet into the next 2 stitches, hdc into the next stitch, dc into the next 2 stitches, tc + chain 2 + tc into the next stitch. I repeated that 3 more times.

I made a total of 18 granny squares, joined 9 of them together with single crochet and got the front of the bag. I made the back in the same way. Then added two more rows of single crochet on each part (front and back), joined them together on three sides, also with single crochet, and finally made the handles. I got the idea how to make the handles watching this great tutorial, only I used single crochet instead of half double crochet (in the video).
I hope that these instructions were not too much confusing… This was the first time I’ve tried to explain the process of making something. It was easier to make the bag, than to wrote this little tutorial, So please, don’t be too hard on me…

No, this is not a pillow! Finally, I made something besides pillows. It’s my first granny square crochet bag! 🙂
I tried some beautiful new multicolored 100 % cotton yarn, which I have never used before, and found it a bit difficult to combine colors… but since I love almost all shades of green and gray, I’m quite happy how it turned out.
Now and again, I used Clare’s trusty flower granny square 🙂 which I’ve already used for my pillows. You can watch video tutorial
here.
Thank you Clare! And that little tree in the background, is my cute olive tree, which I brought this year from Corfu island (in Greece). Corfu is so gorgeous… I really enjoyed my time there 🙂 In my next post, I’ll show you the colorful African flower stars that I’ve just finished.

Some of the tote bags I recently made

with crochet flowers

with a bear (she obviously likes pink nail polish)

with a dog.