A woman came into the shop asking for a private lesson to learn to make this bag. The pattern intrigued me, or to be more honest, stumped me in the beginning, so I decided to cast on and make one along with her. It is basically cabling in the round in two colors, along with increasing as you go. Fair Isle and cabling at the same time. It's a great way to learn to cable without a cable needle because you have a MC and a CC so it is easy to see what is happening when stitches are held front or back. My student is still using the cable needle, but at least we got to talk about doing without.
Top left is the bag pre-felted, a watch next to it for scale. The pattern and website have lots of useful information to assist in the felting process. With the two colors, it's like two layers of knitting so you really have to man-handle the bag into shape during the felting.
Now for the fun part, pick out a cool lining fabric and handles and have the nice lady at the quilt shop line it for me.
We're off for winter break. Have a great weekend!
Love that lining. And the bottom is so neat. Will you use it? I have felted bags and found I just don't use 'em. It's really cool though! You are such a good teacher.
Posted by:kathleen | February 16, 2007 at 03:16 PM
I was just thinking about you and your lack of cable needle-ness (huh?!) today. I'm still helpless without the needle. Sad, really.
The bag is so cute. Looks like a fun project.
Posted by:Annie | February 16, 2007 at 03:59 PM
Wowa, a very cool bag!
Posted by:Diane E. | February 16, 2007 at 04:07 PM
It's beautiful, MB. I hadn't seen that one before. Cool!
Posted by:Kerstin | February 16, 2007 at 05:03 PM
This is certainly an interesting design and the finished product is very beautiful too.
Posted by:Siow Chin | February 18, 2007 at 05:02 AM
The lining and the bag look great together.
Have a nice winter break!
Posted by:Kim | February 19, 2007 at 06:44 AM
The bag looks cool. Did you find it tricky to manage cabling and two-color knitting at once? Do you use two hands when knitting in two colors? I finally finished the wonderful Fake Isle hat that I saw on your blog a couple of months back. Working on it really helped me practice my two-handed technique for color knitting. I also found an interesting YouTube link to a demonstration for continental knitting in one of the blogs that helped me to tension the yarn better in my left hand for my two-color knitting. When I knit with one color, I knit in the English style, so I needed to find a comfortable hold for the yarn in the continental style. Anyway, the point of all this is to ask you if doing the cabling along with the two-color knitting was a challenge.
Posted by:Suzanne | February 19, 2007 at 07:39 AM
That bag is so cool, I'm digging it big time!
Posted by:Sonia | February 25, 2007 at 10:35 AM