. brightmeadowknits: December 2013

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Accessory bag

I saw a post in Ravelry concerning having a "day of the week" bag for knitting projects - take the appropriate bag with you when you leave the house - never be bored with the same pattern.  To save myself from having to transfer tools and accessories from bag to bag, I used Anita Goodesign pattern from an embroidery demo to make a small bag for knitting accessories to take with me.  I ordered extra needle gauges and sets of cable needles for duplicate bags from loveknitting.com.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Handknit market bag

Last year I won a door prize somewhere, a ball of red cotton yarn.  The yarn was Debbie Bliss eco Fairtrade collection in red (color 32613, dyelot 9102801)  I've been wanting to knit a market bag in cotton or linen,  so I started with a free pattern from purlsoho.com "Elisa's Nest Tote" I started off on the wrong foot when I decided to knit every row, making a garter lace, instead of dutifully knitting 1 row and purling one row.  When I could see after the first 24 or so rows that it was going to be smaller than the bag I wanted, I departed even more dramatically from the pattern by making the rows knit so far into the "bottom" of the bag and picking up the stitches on circulars and knitting around.   The door prize yarn only went about 1/3 of the way up the side of the bag that I wanted so I delved into my stash and got out a couple of balls of Bernat "Cot'n Soft" that I've had for ages.  The red sticker price tag on the label said "$1.00" so the total cost of the bag was $2.00 (plus whatever the seminar cost!)  

I returned to the pattern to get inspiration for the bag handles.  When the bag was almost as tall as I wanted I decreased every fifth stitch to bring the top in and keep the bag from flopping open, and changed to garter stitch (knitting in the round it is knit 1 row, purl 1 row).  After knitting six rows garter stitch I counted and I found I had a total of 78 stitches. I decided I wanted the short sides of the top to be 1/2 as long as the sides, so I divided by 6 and planned on 13 stitches at each end and 26 for each long side.    I counted the stitches and decided I wanted the applied I-cord on the entire long side length.  I did not plan that the applied I-cord would take up (and by that I mean shorten) the long side, but I am still pleased with the outcome.

What do you think?

(Edited 12/4/2013 to update yarn)