more baggage
Recently my beau and I decided that we want to sell up and buy ourselves a new home (or more precisely, allow a bank to let us live somewhere else while we spend 30 years paying them for the privilege). As a result, it looks like my crafting time will be slightly curtailed for the next couple of months, replaced by more pressing needs such as selecting and planting greenery, deck building, finding attractive but cost effective new tapware and negotiating which colour, if any, we're going to paint the treated pine fence with. All in the name of ensuring someone else wants to pay a good price for the privilege of their bank letting them live here. We're planning to make sure that our new plans won't affect our participation in the shoe making course... only 8 sleeps away to the first session! (feels like I've been waiting forever)
I suspect that when we get to the moving house stage some time in the future, hobbies will be more severely curtailed by packing and storing. But last week, between digging and musing over paint swatches, the French market bag I'm making for my friend K (in return for some of her fabulous hand made pottery) was finished.
The vital statistics:
Yarn: Some 12 ply cherry red knitted together with 2 strands of 4ply pure wool (in 3 different colourways) from Marta's Yarns.
Needles: Some sparkly 8mm addi dpns (kindly lent to me by Catherine) and a 100cm long 10mm silver addi circ.
Pattern and modifications: based on the same method as Knitty's French Market Bag, but I didn't follow the pattern.
I started by knitting a small garter stitch square and then picked up stitches around the edge and started knitting rounds, increasing two stitches at each corner on every other round, until I got bored of increasing. The idea of starting with a square was from Catherine (local s'n'b knitting guru) who'd knitted some socks the same way. We don't call her a guru for no reason. In my opinion it's a fabulously clever trick for the FMB- so much easier than wrestling with 8 stitches on fat dpn's.
I knitted using one strand of 12 ply together with two of the four ply yarns (see the original yarns here). To get some graduation between the colours I used two strands of one 4ply for about.... um... a bit; and then knitted with one strand each of two of them until the first one ran out, and so on.
The whole process was exceptionally unscientific. I have no idea how many increases or rounds I did, but I found I had about 135 sts when I decided to start the handles, and it seemed exceptionally large. To do the handles, I divided the stitches into approximate eighth's, casting of half of them and then knitting up some tapered bands. The handles were knitted a few times- I kept on running out of yarn, so they ended up being mostly one strand of 12 ply with one strand of 4ply.
After some kitchenering (using one of the angled bamboo sewing needles I recently acquired - perfect for the job!) and securing all the dangling ends, I chucked it in the front loader washing machine with some jeans, sheets and clothing on 80degC and went out for a few hours. I came back and it looked pretty damn felted (and the laundry was finished too- bonus!) and ready for blocking over my trusty French market bag blocking tub (I used it for a previous FMB too) and leaving out in the sun to dry.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the process -especially my lack of procrastinating and deliberating over the size and colours- and results, although I do have one frustration with it (or rather, with myself): I didn't match the placement of handles to align with the square base.
Now, this isn't a problem (being as I blocked it to a round shape) for anyone except an anal retentive architect who knows that with a bit more thought, and no more effort, it could have been done differently; so that when you look into it when it's empty it wouldn't look skewiff. But I'm trying to just relax and tell myself it's ok, that imperfection is part of life, and that now I've made that mistake once, I won't (fingers crossed) make it again. Time will tell...
I suspect that when we get to the moving house stage some time in the future, hobbies will be more severely curtailed by packing and storing. But last week, between digging and musing over paint swatches, the French market bag I'm making for my friend K (in return for some of her fabulous hand made pottery) was finished.
The vital statistics:
Yarn: Some 12 ply cherry red knitted together with 2 strands of 4ply pure wool (in 3 different colourways) from Marta's Yarns.
Needles: Some sparkly 8mm addi dpns (kindly lent to me by Catherine) and a 100cm long 10mm silver addi circ.
Pattern and modifications: based on the same method as Knitty's French Market Bag, but I didn't follow the pattern.
I started by knitting a small garter stitch square and then picked up stitches around the edge and started knitting rounds, increasing two stitches at each corner on every other round, until I got bored of increasing. The idea of starting with a square was from Catherine (local s'n'b knitting guru) who'd knitted some socks the same way. We don't call her a guru for no reason. In my opinion it's a fabulously clever trick for the FMB- so much easier than wrestling with 8 stitches on fat dpn's.
I knitted using one strand of 12 ply together with two of the four ply yarns (see the original yarns here). To get some graduation between the colours I used two strands of one 4ply for about.... um... a bit; and then knitted with one strand each of two of them until the first one ran out, and so on.
The whole process was exceptionally unscientific. I have no idea how many increases or rounds I did, but I found I had about 135 sts when I decided to start the handles, and it seemed exceptionally large. To do the handles, I divided the stitches into approximate eighth's, casting of half of them and then knitting up some tapered bands. The handles were knitted a few times- I kept on running out of yarn, so they ended up being mostly one strand of 12 ply with one strand of 4ply.
After some kitchenering (using one of the angled bamboo sewing needles I recently acquired - perfect for the job!) and securing all the dangling ends, I chucked it in the front loader washing machine with some jeans, sheets and clothing on 80degC and went out for a few hours. I came back and it looked pretty damn felted (and the laundry was finished too- bonus!) and ready for blocking over my trusty French market bag blocking tub (I used it for a previous FMB too) and leaving out in the sun to dry.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the process -especially my lack of procrastinating and deliberating over the size and colours- and results, although I do have one frustration with it (or rather, with myself): I didn't match the placement of handles to align with the square base.
Now, this isn't a problem (being as I blocked it to a round shape) for anyone except an anal retentive architect who knows that with a bit more thought, and no more effort, it could have been done differently; so that when you look into it when it's empty it wouldn't look skewiff. But I'm trying to just relax and tell myself it's ok, that imperfection is part of life, and that now I've made that mistake once, I won't (fingers crossed) make it again. Time will tell...
posted by Clementine's Shoes at 3:48 PM
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