There has been no progress on the flower purse since the last update, but a discussion of seamless single crochet is in order.

The handles are crocheted back and forth around the opening of the purse with a slip-stitch and chain turn at the end of each row.  That's the diagram above.  

I'm going to be honest with you here, I'm only 97% sure I understand the diagram*.  What I see is: single crochet in each single crochet in the row below until the end of the row, slip stitch to the first single crochet of the row, chain one, turn, make the first single crochet in the last single crochet of the previous row (meaning that you have to skip over the slip stitch that joined the first and last stitches of the previous row before you make your first single crochet).

This is not how I do it in my seamless single crochet tutorial, but I thought I'd try their way first because I was in a rush and didn't want to mentally re-write the pattern if I didn't need to.  If it looked crappy, I'd just do it my way.

And when I was done ... the "seam" (between the two red stitch markers) looked almost perfect.  Very *very* close to perfect.  I was kind of stunned because I spent days and days (literally ... during a vacation) testing out all the ways to do seamless single crochet and I thought I'd picked the best looking one when I did my tutorial ... but apparently I didn't.

My only explanation is that the way you accomplish this kind of seamlessness involves skipping over a stitch after you turn and it *feels* like you're going to totally buckle the seam, but it doesn't *actually* buckle the seam.  In fact, I like this way much better because it doesn't require the deep-single-crochet stitch that I include in my tutorial.

After finishing the purse handles and being super-happy with the "seam" I wanted to try out color changes ... because with my deep-single-crochet system color changes are less than smooth.

The row switch-a-roo is between the two arrows.  Doesn't that color change look awesome?!  The bottom edge of each colors' rows are smooth and straight.  No errant stitches.

For comparison purposes, here is what color changes look like with the deep-single-crochet seamless technique from my tutorial.  And, actually, when I do color changes on the top row of the two-row color stripes, I make an "even deeper than normal" single crochet to hide some of the other stuff going on.

My original way doesn't look heinous, but it doesn't look as good as the other way *AND* the other way is so much easier to remember, understand, and explain to others.

I definitely want to make a new seamless single crochet tutorial showing this technique because it's totally the best way to do it.  I hope I can do it soon, but I wouldn't bet on it.  Maybe I'll just make a note on the tutorial to see this post until I can get to it.

I'm so happy about finding such a simple, sublime way to do seamless single crochet.  How come it's nowhere to be found on the web?  How come I've only seen it in exactly one** crochet book ... not to mention magazines or websites? How come nobody commented on my tutorial saying, "Hey, I do it a totally easier way ..." in the last  26 months? It seems like such a useful technique.  It should be one of the fundamentals of crochet!

*ACK!  While I was editing this post just now, I realized that I completely mis-read the chart.  Thank goodness for that 3% of doubt which kept my eyes open.  They are not closing up the seam as they crochet.  They are going back and forth without closing it.  Then, at the end, they are slip stitching to to left petal, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the first row on the left, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the second row on the right, chaining one, slip stitching to the top of the third row on the left, chaining one, etc.

Also, thank goodness that I didn't read the chart correctly.  See what good can come from having no clue what you're doing?

Although, I could still be totally wrong about what the chart says ... wouldn't that be funny? :)

**The above note means that this technique is mentioned in exactly ZERO books or magazines or websites.  How in the world can that be possible?  How?!