So this here's a felted bag that I knit for Carrie over at Thread and Thimble (I'm too lazy to fiddle with a hotlink, so just mosey on over to the sidebar and figure it out for yeeself, not that anyone reads this bloody blog anyway). I can show it to y'all cuz I've already given it to her. Anyhoo, the pattern came out of the latest Knitter's Universe I believe. I don't have the magazine on me right now for exact referencing, but I believe that is correct.
This pattern screamed Carrie when I saw it as she was originally the quilter and I was the knitter. It seemed a perfect yin and yang situation until she decided to defect over to the dark side and is now, I believe, getting hooked on the culture of yarn. At the very least, she is dabbling quite heavily. I thought this would be a nice synthesis of her two interests. Until, that is, something else comes along (which could happen any day now) and then I'll have to regroup.
The brown I knit out of Patons Classic Merino, the orange and yellow out of Lion Brand exact same thing (there was a 2-fer sale at Michaels). These are what I would classify as Carrie colours, so I was quite excited when they fit so nicely together.
The pattern itself was super easy as it's done all in garter stitch, thereby making the finished product before felting that much more sturdy. And of course the final felted product was just awesome. I'm so going to do one in blues for me at some point (yeah right...I say that about everything, never happens).
I lined the inside with some stash fab., a quilting cotton I believe which seemed to co-ordinate nicely. The handles were purely for my own amusement. The pattern called for i-cord handles, but I wanted something a little sturdier and that reminded me of something that you'd see a knitting bag adorned with years ago. (If you can't really tell from the photos, they are a bambooy looking kind of handle.) The reversing of the colours on each side was my only adjustment of the pattern. The math worked out for the amount of yarn that I bought, rather than buying double the amount of one colour to get two matching sides. Besides, I like the effect. Has that quilty feel to it.
Anyhow, this was a hoot to create and is only one of a number of projects I've done for Christmas. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of all of the other ones before I put them in boxes and wrapped them. Guess I'll be busy snapping photos on Christmas morning.
Merry Merry and Happy Happy to everyone out there celebrating in whatever manner you are celebrating. It's an unusually (global)warm holiday around here, so I think I'll take advantage and go out and get a tan. Until '07 likely!
