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(Almost.)
The bag I started nearly a year ago sat around in pieces after I got it blocked in January. I finally got organized enough to trace the pieces for the lining and construct the bag about a month ago.
Finally finished!
(The alert reader will notice the difference between the flap now that the duplicate stitch work is done and the flap when I last posted about this project.)
I suppose it isn’t surprising that I waited. I had to fuss with the lining, adjusting until it fit, and it took a while to get it all worked out. I did manage to add in some pockets for small tools, including my beloved stitch and needle gauge. I used a heavy interfacing to give the bag some body, which worked, although I would have been happier if I’d used fusible interfacing. Then I could have stuck the lining to the interfacing and gotten a cleaner finish.
Already in service...
The only thing it still needs is clasp to hold it together. My friend Deb has suggested Norwegian pewter clasps. While they are beautiful, I think I’d rather just use some hook and eye closures so that the claps are invisible. The front of the bag seems complicated enough without adding more stuff to it.
It only took me 9 months to get from knitted to constructed. Any bets on how long it takes me to get the closure put on the flap? If I could, I’d go without one, but when you pick the bag up by the strap, the whole things sags and the flap pops up, making it easy for the yarn to jump out and escape.
Watch this space for reports on other knitting projects I’ve been playing with lately.
I recently finished a project from the book Amigurumi Knits: Patterns for 20 Cute Mini Knits by Hansi Singh.
I bought the book because this woman’s idea of cute is wonderfully twisted. While the patterns for veggies and star fish are adorable, not everyone can see the sweet in jellyfish, earthworms, and spiders. Yes, the book includes patterns for all of these, and also for a praying mantis, a black-devil anglerfish, and (believe it or not) garlic.
But the pattern that intrigued me most was one for the Loch Ness Monster, which is the first thing I’ve made from the book.
My Nessie, complete with stylish scarf
I found out that, along with having a twisted sense of cute, the author has a slightly warped idea of what is reasonable to do when knitting. Because the pieces are eventually stuffed, she recommends using much smaller needles for your yarn to ensure a tight fabric. Maybe I overdid it, but I found some of the stitches really difficult to make with such tight knitting. I made several adjustments to her pattern (mainly for sanity’s sake) and everything worked just fine. And I loved the results so much I had to make her a little scarf from some leftover sock yarn that I love. (My husband says scarves are what all the stylish plesiosaurs are wearing…)
I think my next knitting project will be a sweater, but I’m sure other critters will be joining Nessie one of these days. Maybe I’ll make the Jackalope…
I’ve actually already finished the flap completely and have blocked the pieces. However, the camera is in the shop, so I can only show part of the progress I’ve made.
After cutting the front and back apart (by cutting through the steek), I picked up the flap stitches on the back half and then knitted the flap using intarsia, which is a different color knitting technique than the other parts of the bag required. You can see the difference from the wrong side of this piece.
The blue and purple part has the yarn running all the way across the stitches in the back, which is necessary, because the two colors in any one row are used constantly. This type of stranded color work is also known as Fair Isle knitting. The pink and blue part has large areas of a single color, so a single strand of yarn is worked for a single motif (i.e., one strand of blue for each separate rose), which is intarsia. Both techniques require counting and careful yarn management, but I think it is worth the extra effort to have more color in the piece.
The next step, which I will post when I have a picture of it, uses duplicate stitch, which is actually embroidery rather than knitting.
While this knitting project is definitely a challenge for me, this part of it – which is the front and back of the bag knitted all at once – was actually a lot easier than the strap, because I was always on the knit side of the piece while working. Also, the pattern repeats were shorter, making the counting a lot easier.
Bag front and back, with only one side pinned down to show the pattern.
I was more than halfway through with the knitting before I realized I had twisted the piece when I joined up the cast-on stitches. For those who have never knit in the round: this was knit on a circular needle (two points with a cable attaching them to each other). A long circular needle. Which means, after I cast on my 470+ stitches, I had to be super careful with the first stitch I knit, making sure that the cast-on stitches were all lined up properly to avoid a twist. I checked multiple times before commiting to that first stitch, but I still messed up.
There I was, with weeks of work done and a major problem on my hands. Because of the decreasing row lengths, my piece needed to lie flat so I could get the circle I ended up with (as seen above). Only this twist was going to make that impossible. My first thought was that I was going to have to rip everything out and do it all over. Not a happy thought. I’ve ripped things out to fix mistakes before, but considering all the counting and different yarns involved in this project, I knew that once I pulled it apart, it would be a long time before I started on it again.
Then I had a great insight. Cut the steek! Because this is actually two separate pieces being knit all at once, the stripey section running through the middle of the circle is a bridge or steek – extra stitches that give you a place to cut the two pieces apart*. I realized I could just cut one part of the steek early, untwist the piece, and go right on knitting. Man am I glad I thought of this. Not only did it work, but it saved me major hair-pulling and swearing, and means I will be finishing this bag sometime soon, instead of never.
Close-up showing where I cut the steek in order to untwist the piece. You can just see the white thread I used to reinforce the steek before cutting.
Next to do: cut the front and back apart, then knit the bag flap onto the back section of the bag.
*Steeks have to be reinforced before cutting – you stitch or crochet on both sides of the place you are going to cut to keep the knitting from unraveling. I tried to find a good quick on-line explanation of this technique and was seriously disappointed. Lots of detailed instructions, but they were light on clear illustrations and they assumed too much knowledge up-front, which is why I wound up with the bland but clear Wikipedia definition for my steek link.
So, the crazy knitting project is well under way. As predicted, it’s challenging, at least compared to what I usually do i.e., projects that use just one yarn and have plenty of “little attention required” sections in them. I have to stay alert and count all the time with this one.
The first piece is the strap/bottom of the bag, which is knit in the round as one section. Halfway through, you do a series of short rows to build a wedge into the bottom so that the bag is wider than the strap. The worst mistake I made on this section was getting off on an entire row of the insertion and having to rip it all out and do it again. I had plenty of times when I lost track of what I was doing and had to back up a little to fix things, but everything looks OK now.
I haven't blocked this yet and didn't want to bother just for a photo, so I've pinned open a section of the strap and of the bottom of the bag to show the patterns.
Note for anyone actually doing this colorway of the bag: I swapped the gold and purple because I didn’t like how it looked with so much of the gold (turmeric) yarn in it. I’m not sure I like this any better – the insertion and the main strap patterns look like they belong to completely different projects. Fortunately, it’s the bottom of the bag and shouldn’t really show much.
I have started the next part, which is also knit in the round – knitting the front and back all at once. It’s actually proving simple so far (knock on wood) and since the number of stitches decreases every three rounds, it will get faster as I get farther along.
