Knitted Bag

I was chatting to Cheeky (my best friend, and of course that's not her real name but that's what I call her) yesterday and I told her about this blog. She said I needed to finish some UFOs, and told me to list five of them. I should probably do a post that has all my UFOs on it but I have a feeling that might depress me. Anyway, I listed the following five

• Knitted Fair Isle Bag
• Mr Bump Cushion
• Bibs
• Grey Jumper
• Bernie's Blanket.

She told me to do the first three, to get them out of the way. The first two don't have much left on them, and the third one is for a baby that's due in a couple of weeks. It would be nice to have a gift ready in time for that bub.

Sooooo. I finished the bag! It's one that I knitted the pieces for a while ago, but I didn't want to sew it up, becuase that meant getting out my sewing machine and blah blah blah. (My sewing machine's name is YoYo - Long story). But the machine was already out so I figured I may as well.



The pattern for this bag was from an issue of Simply Knitting. The mag gave away the bamboo handles as well. In the original pattern the bottom of the bag was purple, the top a sort of pinkish mauve, and the criss cross pattern was navy. It's amazing how different it looks to the bag I knitted.



I have lots of oddments of coloured wool, and I decided, since there were 14 rows of pattern, and 7 colours in the rainbow, I'd 'knit a rainbow' into the pattern. I even checked to see what order the colours were meant to be in. I know it's a bit 'braggy' but I'm really chuffed with the way it came out.



(Can you see my mug on my coaster? I had to include that in the shot - it's already being used!)

Knitted bags stretch, so they need to be lined. Otherwise stuff falls out, and since I carry knitting needles with me most places, it's not unknown for me to be walking along with a needle poking out of my bag. Jabbing a random passer by with a 4mm needle doesn't seem to go down well. So I needed to line it. I'm so nice to random passers by!

The lining is actually the bottom of one leg of a pair of black trousers I had that I loved, but like so many pairs of my trousers had worn away between the thighs. So I cropped off the leg and used that for a lining. It should be suitably strong. The bag is a bit too small to carry say a jumper in, but hopefully the lining will mean my wallet won't stretch the thing to buggery!

So thanks Cheeky for encouraging me to finish the bag. I guess that's one more UFO that has vanished from existance. Or perhaps the alien has been assimilated into Human society? I don't know. I just knit these things. :)