Brown Felted Bag

It's Saturday morning, too early to tackle any knitting, but I feel like doing something - so I'll blog. Since I don't have anything new with my current stuff, I went into the archives and found pictures of my brown felted bag. This was my first felted project and my first project knitted in the round - the date on the pictures is 4/23/2005.

There are things I really like about the bag and a few things I learned. The kitty gives perspective of the size in the picture above. Jaspers is a pretty big cat and this is a deep bag. Unfortunately since it happened so long ago, I don't remember how much yarn I used. But I know it's cascade 220. And I still today love the mottled color of brown.

The furry stuff I bought at Hobby Lobby or Michael's. It not only has the fur, but various brown and tan nubbies. I guess because of the location on the bag, and the felting power of the Cascade, there are no problems with the furry area not felting.

And man is that thing thick. The wall of the bag measures somewhere between 3/8" and 1/2" thick. Now, the strap is probably the one thing I don't like. Over the last year and a half it's gone from 36" long to - oh - 48" -50". It's a garter stitch strap that stretches like crazy. There's been talk of adding a leather strap that goes under the bottom of the bag and comes up the sides to give the bottom some stability and to alleviate the stretchy strap syndrome. I think if I was going to carry it as a purse I would do that. As a project bag, it's OK as it is.

Wow, the flashback was kind of fun, I've come a long way baby.

My knitting friends will remember that as a new knitter (who didn't really have any knitting friends when I started) I didn't know about winding skeins of yarn with a ballwinder (and store owner didn't offer). I was knitting this bag from the middle and the end of an unwound skein and it was the biggest mess you have every seen. I survived, though, and am now a better knitter for it.