A few weeks back I posted about my best friend's birthday Moogle, that I made back in May. Well now I'm going to share the bag I whipped up for his wife's birthday, almost on the spur of the moment.

I was making a large messenger sized bag out of a fuzzy type of wool. It was turning out larger than I'd planned, and working with the dark blue yarn with all the lumps and bumps wasn't easy, not even using my largest hook, but I'd seen these monster bags, and I'd wanted to make one for this birthday coming up. It was taking me about an hour to do two rows around. Not good, but I had 8 days, so it was not panic stations yet.

Then I got an sms. "I'm having a party tomorrow night for my birthday, do you want to come?" Due to location differences, I'd have to leave my house around 4:30pm on a train to get there in time. It was now 9pm. Eeep. NOW it was panic stations.

I grabbed a nearby ball of purple feather yarn, messed around for an hour, ripped out all the stitches and made a base out of plain black yarn. Then I built up the walls with the purple feather. Much better. I made this bag about 6" square, instead of the 12" the other one was.

Did I mention I had to take Miss Five to a birthday party the next day, for 2 hours? Luckily I got the body and flap of the bag finished before hand. When I got home, I made the teeth and eye parts, and rushed off to catch my train. Where I sewed the pieces on. And finished weaving the last end in, 2 minutes before reaching the station where I was meeting my friends. That's why the photo isn't the best - it's taken on a bench at the train station, after she "unwrapped" it. Thank heavens for gift bags, that's all I can say.

Oh, I was going to crochet a strap a couple of stitches wide, but the yarn was too unwieldy and bulky, so the nifty strap you see above is actually just the purple feather yarn held with the black yarn, and crocheted as a base chain. Knotted at the ends and sewn on. That's it. Yup, I can barely tell either.