My denim cabled bag is getting closer to completion:

You can see that I finished the flap. I had increased the cables to the top of the bag, then worked a couple of repeats in the full width to come across the top of the bag, then decreased down to the point.

Then I started with applied I-cord. As much as I love the look of applied I-cord, it’s pretty boring to knit, and invariably, you need a lot of it. It’s not good TV knitting, either, because you have to keep looking to pick up that stitch. I feel as if I’ve knit a couple of kilometers of it so far! It kind of disappears, but does give the edge a better appearance – if you look at the handle, at about 7 or 8 o’clock, you can see the difference between the two edges.

I’ve done all around the other side and around the flap – the button loop is I-cord that isn’t applied – and need to continue around the bag and the one edge of the strap. The I-cord does cover up the picked up stitches nicely across the lower edge of the bag – you can compare and contrast here, between the part with the I-cord and the part I still need to do.

I also found some zingy lining fabric in the remnant bin, a Madras cotton stripe in hot pink and denim blue which might be a Kaffe Fassett fabric. As those are distributed by Rowan, it seems appropriate. I like it either way.

All I need to find now is a great button.

Rowan Denim is said to shrink quite a bit in the length when it’s blocked/washed – just the way jeans used to – so I’m curious to see what happens when I wash this. It wouldn’t break my heart if the fabric was a bit stiffer. I washed the lining already, so everything will be pre-shrunk by the time it gets joined together.

Plus the additional feet for my Weekend Getaway Satchel arrived this week, so I’ll finally be able to finish that. It looks really good – what a fun project. A lot of hours of work but none of it was too hard, and the felting was fun. If you follow this link to Interweave, it will show you all of the patterns in the Fall 2005 issue – the Weekend Getaway Satchel is about a third of the way down the page. Of course, mine is a bit different – why make it the same as everyone else’s?!