knitting is a hereditary disease

Finished! Short row felted bag

Posted on 01/08/2008 by Andrea | Comments (2)
Filed under : Finished Objects, Knitting

I love me a finished object, don't you? Meet the second biggest pain in my ass (knitting-wise, anyway) lately: the short row felted bag.

Pattern: The Short Row Bag Collection by Diane Sutliff. This pattern comes with several variations; some are knitted sideways to get vertical striping (like this one) and some are knitted vertically. I think this pattern is very clever, although I had a hard time navigating it. There's a whole lot of information in those eight (I think) pages and I tended to get lost. I spent a lot of time scrutinizing the pattern and trying to just understand how it was supposed to work on a basic level. Then I rewrote it out in a way that made more sense to me. Since I was adding short row sections and omitting the base, I kind of had to do that in order to not get lost.

Yarn: The pattern calls for Noro Kureyon, but I wanted to use some Jamieson's DK shetland wool I had in my stash.

I used what I had and bought two new colors (the brighter blue and brighter purple, to go with my sister's bright disposition). I think it was a wash as far as stash usage, because now I have lots of small amounts of many colors left over.

Modifications: Many. I didn't get gauge with the wool I wanted to use so I added a couple of extra stripes to make sure the bag was the width I was going for. That worked out pretty well. I also added a pocket on the inside. I knitted it sideways because the bag was knitted sideways and I wanted it all to felt the same way and sewed it to the inside of the bag before felting. This worked out surprisingly well and is almost undetectable from the outside.

The biggest (and worst) modification was to the bottom. I didn't want to knit a flat bottom like the pattern called for, so I just didn't knit the bottom at all and decided I'd "figure something out" later. I don't recommend this kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants knitting. It works for some people (I'm looking at you, Mom), but so far I've probably had too many problems arise from a lack of planning to make it worth it. I knitted a garter stitch bottom after finishing the whole bag, felted the thing, and then cut the bottom back out of it because it looked so awful. Then Mom (bless her heart) machine-sewed the bottom closed.

Made for: I made this for my sister for Christmas. I had a little bit of extra time to finish it because we weren't celebrating Christmas with her until January 6th, and I used all the available extra time to help undo the problems I'd created for myself.

Overall thoughts: Well, my sister liked it! And that's the main thing. The short row sections were satisfying to make. Instead of working back and forth across the whole row, you just do each little "bubble" separately and then move on to the next and there's something very satisfying about that. It's like working magic, almost. And felting always feels like working magic, although there's also a certain amount of fear involved. If there was one thing I could change, it would have been to have planned for the bottom from the beginning instead of just assuming I'd eventually come up with a plan. Also, I like the distinct solid-colored sections, but I can imagine it would be great fun to knit this with Kureyon and be continually surprised by how the colors came out.

2 Comments

Man, I talk a lot!

- said andrea (01/08/2008, 2:42 PM)

I love the finished product ... you just need to think about the great result, and not all that other schtuff. I love it that the purse perfectly matches her spiffy new purple tennis shoes. (Who buys purple tennis shoes??!) She must have been having a cosmic moment when she bought them.

- said Mom (01/08/2008, 2:42 PM)