Fiber Babble: 'Tis the Season Bag

'Tis the Season Bag

December 18, 2006

Here's the project of the month from the Yahoo! Bag-A-Holics group. The pattern was written by Rachel and, though mine looks similar, I changed a bunch of stuff.

Now, as to why I changed those things I did, it had absolutely nothing to do with how the pattern was written. From what I can tell, Rachel did a fine job!

No, the reason I made changes had to do with my stash and my patience level. First off, I had some red Patons Classic Merino literally just sitting out on the kitchen island, waiting to be put away. Since I'm always loathe to put things away, that's what I grabbed for the body of the bag.

Well, if I was using 100% wool for the body (and part of the handles, too), I needed to continue with the same fiber to finish the handles. Fortunately, I had some natural/off-white Patons. That was put away, but it isn't now...

Okay. Got the body and the handles covered. Now to find some eyelash yarn for the band and pom-pom. Oops. Nothing in my stash that qualified. Ding-dang-darnit, need to make a trip to Michael's. Unfortunately, the white Fun Fur was TOO white. The "champagne" Fun Fur was too BROWN. What's this I spy? Some Patons "Divine" in Icicle White. Perfect match with the wool. (Well, whaddaya know - same manufacturer. Coincidence? Sometimes I'm not so quick on the uptake)

After gathering all the materials - okay, true confession here: Of course I didn't wait until I had everything before jumping right in and starting to knit! - the body of the purse was knit, plus the i-cords for the handles (304 rows for each of the three cords - yay ISM!). Wait. I live in the Pacific Northwest. It rains. This is wool. Better give it a short trip through the washer to partially felt it, since that's what will happen eventually anyway!

Now I have a partially felted bag and handles (did the i-cords separately then braided them afterward). Since I wasn't able to follow the pattern's instructions which said to knit the eyelash yarn first then attach the red... psst! that's because I knitted the bag before getting the trim, remember? I needed to figure out what to do with the fluffy band.

Out comes my Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stitches . I know that somewhere I've seen a loopy stitch. Turns out it was in the Crochet Section. I changed that, too. The instructions call for making the loop (on the WS) on one row, then turning the work and doing a single row of SC, then a loop row again. That wasn't making it fluffy enough, so I figured out how to loop on both the WS and the RS (which, though that sounds weird, puts all the loops on the same side).

Made a 22-stitch-wide band, which I attached at the top of the bag with one row of loop stitch. After that, since I was in crochet mode, I crocheted a (hollow) ball, again using the loop stitch. Both the band and the pom-pom are attached "temporarily" because, yessirree - I have A Plan.

I lined only the rectangle-ish part of the bag (the pointy part is empty). After the holidays have passed, I can remove the white fluffy stuff, add a flap and a button and fold up the pointy part to meet the flap and voila! A rectangular, artsy-fartsy small bag to carry throughout the rest of the year!

I actually sewed the handles on with dental floss, so in theory I could remove and replace those, too. Wow! What genius! I wonder if I'll actually do any of that? Stay tuned, I guess!

Labels: felting, knitting