A Knitted Purse

Posted on April 11, 2024 by Deborah Cooke

Here’s another project that’s been waiting on me for a while and was finished up this week. I wanted to post it yesterday, but the handsewing at the end took a bit longer than anticipated.

One Stick Two Stick Sushi Wallet instructions

It started with a kit called Sushi Wallet. Here’s a Ravelry link for the pattern. The kit was from One Stick Two Stick and was packaged in a cute way, like a tray of sushi with six little balls of wool. I’ve chucked the packaging from mine, but here’s one that sold on Etsy. The kit includes the yarn, the pattern and a matching zipper.

On the right is the instruction folder, which shows the sushi wallet you’re supposed to make at the top. The second wallet is a variation, with just one sushi on the side and stripes on the back.

I found the kit for a buck in the discount section at Len’s Mills and they were all in the blue-green colourway called Caribbean Seas, possibly because it doesn’t make sense for sushi to be those colours (even though the combination was pretty). The yarn is a bamboo wool mix and there were four colours included: 64g of the medium blue, 18g of the light blue, 13g of the dark green and 11g of the light green. I weighed them all because I planned to do something different than follow the instructions. There was enough yarn to make two wallets, but I didn’t want two wallets.

I made a bigger purse instead, by casting on more stitches and knitting more rows. I also added a wedge at each side and a base so it wouldn’t be flat. (The original design is flat, a rectangle folded in half.) I also knit a strip to be a handle. Then I knit petals and leaves from the other colours. Here are all the pieces.

Purse pieces knit by Deborah Cooke for modified sushi wallet

I felted everything in the washing machine. I put the pieces in laundry bags to make sure none of them were lost in the washing machine – this set from Ikea is really useful. Once that was done, I sewed everything in place. I added some embroidery and ended up with this:

Felted Purse with embroidery by Deborah Cooke

I still didn’t love it, so I added some beads:

Felted Purse with beads by Deborah Cooke

I lined the bag with a cute scrap of batik cotton in matchy colours – just using the purse as a pattern and adding a small seam allowance. I also added a little pocket inside, because I always add little pockets inside purses. They’re so useful. You can see it on the right – it’s the perfect size for a hotel room key, credit card, or folded $20 bill.

batik lining for felted purse by Deborah Cooke

Here’s the assembled lining, ready to go into the purse:

assembled batik lining for felted purse by Deborah Cooke

I hadn’t planned on those two tabs at the top, but they came in handy when attaching the handles.

With the zipper inserted and the handle added, the finished purse looks like this:

Felted Purse by Deborah Cooke, finished - side A

And the flip side:

Felted Purse by Deborah Cooke, finished - side B

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this. The shape is a little bit wonky, but that tends to happen with felted knits. I certainly like it better than I would have liked a blue sushi wallet. 🙂

And this reminds me that somewhere in my stash of unfinished projects, I have the Elegant Edibles kit from Knitpicks, which is now discontinued. I think I knit the kiwi purse and I know I knit the orange one, and they must both waiting to be lined. I was going to knit the bunch of grapes, but I have a feeling that yarn joined the stash instead. I’ll have to have a look.

Market Bag

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve finished one project this week. It was a plain knit, but done in a self-striping yarn, which always jazzes things up a bit. French Market bag knit in Patons SWS by Deborah Cooke This is a round-based market bag knit out of Patons SWS. This yarn is discontinued. It’s a soy and wool blend that felts really well. I also used some Patons SWS in solid green as an accent. There isn’t a pattern for this bag – I started at the center of the bottom and increased every second row until it looked big enough. Then I knit up the sides, around and around, until it looked deep enough. I knit a handle from one side that looked wide enough, then decided the length by making the colours symmetrical. That looked long enough. 🙂 I knit I-cord around the edges of the handle and the top of the bag, and also at the outer edge of the base. I had tried some fair isle bands just above the base but they came out a bit less clear than I’d hoped.

Then I put it in a pillow case and washed it with a load of towels.

Now it looks like this:
French Market bag knit in Patons SWS by Deborah Cooke The I-cord is easier to see, although it didn’t felt as well as the body of the bag in some places (especially along the edge of the handles). I might fuss with it, but I might not. I’ll have to line it, but I like how it looks already. It’s soft and thick, and if I put a drawstring top on it, I’ll use it a lot.

Sipalu Felted Bag

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve finished another felted bag – is it possible to have too many of them? – and although it still needs to be lined, I thought I’d show it to you today. It won’t look any different from the outside once it’s lined, after all. 🙂

The Sipalu bag was available from Knitpicks as a kit, including the wool, but I didn’t like that it wasn’t felted. I knew the result would be less sturdy unfelted, particularly knit of a fingering weight yarn (the kit came with Palette.) The pattern for the Sipalu bag was and is available on its own, so that’s what I bought. The pattern specifies knitting with a number of colours, but I decided to use a self-striping yarn with a contrasting solid instead. I dug into my stash and came up with my felting standby, Patons Soy Wool Stripes and Soy Wool Solids. I used Black and Natural Plum.

I did run out of black. Since the SWS yarn is discontinued, I couldn’t find any more. (I tried.) I then substituted solid red SWS, but didn’t like it in the fair isle – there wasn’t enough contrast with the self-striping Natural Plum – so I frogged that back but used the red on the garter stitch edges. The bag sat, unfinished, in my knitting basket while I tried to figure out what to do. One day I saw a very similar yarn to SWS balled with another company’s label, which gave me the idea of using the Ravelry search engine to find a substitute. Ravelry has a great search engine that lets you specify many variables – I used the content (soy and wool) and the weight (aran) , then looked for single ply yarns in solid colours. I found Gjestal Bris, with a buy link, so ordered some of that. It’s a bit thinner than the SWS, but since I was felting the end product, it worked out just fine.

Here’s the unfelted version of the bag:You’re probably wondering about the white cording. I decided that I wanted the edges of the bag to be more round than the garter stitch alone would make them. I wanted them to be like piping around the edge. So, I bought some cotton cord at the fabric store, the kind that’s used to make piping (!), and sewed it in to all the edges. (I slip-stitched the garter stitch ridge closed on the inside of the bag, with the cord trapped inside.) Because I wasn’t sure if the cord would shrink – or whether it would shrink at the same rate as the SWS – I left the ends long. After the felting was done, I tugged the cords so that the piping was smooth on each edge, then trimmed them and secured the ends inside the bag.

Here’s the bag felted and ready for its lining. It could have been felted just a little bit less, but felting is an inexact science. The button is handmade of porcelain.Here’s my project page on Ravelry, if you want to see more nitty gritty details.

What do you think?

Garter Stripe Square Bag

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve had a nasty cold this past week and a half, one that didn’t want to go away. It wasn’t so bad that I could stand to spend days in bed (I have to be at death’s door for that) but was sufficiently bad that I couldn’t write new work. I’ve been doing administrivia – editing, proofreading, updating links etc. etc. – and got pretty much fed up with this particular cold virus.

Even worse, it also been affected my knitting. I couldn’t knit lace, or do any armhole shaping, or knit anything that required much thinking. I didn’t think I’d finish things well in this state – my stripey Noro cardigan is done, with the sleeves reknitted, but grafting those side seams has been beyond my abilities and energy level. I also wasn’t able to recalculate – I had started to seam together my Knit, Swirl cardigan, only to discover that the sleeves are too narrow. I need to re-plan, frog, and reknit the sleeves, but not while this virus was in residence. All my plans to finish everything before casting on something new were trashed by this cold.

Garter stitch has been suiting me pretty well. Knit, knit, knit. Easy, peasy. I didn’t have anything like that on my needles, so needed a plan.

Since my Noro cardigan is done, I have a lot of Noro Kureyon Sock left over in one colourway. (#289) It’s all bits and ends, though, because I needed to match the colour sequence and there were breaks in the yarn. I was going to put this in to my stash for the Sock Hexagon afghan, but it seemed like a lot of one colourway. I had a look in that stash and found even more Noro sock yarn….soooooooo, a plan was born. Altogether, I gathered over 500g of ends of Noro Kureyon Sock and Noro Silk Garden Sock.

A big chunk of it is becoming a stripey tote bag.

This pattern is for a felted bag, made of striped squares assembled in a clever way. Here’s the creator’s blog post about it – it’s in Japanese, but has lots of pictures. What a cute bag! There are some English instructions on Ravelry, right here. Essentially, you cast on an odd number of stitches and knit a square with the same number of ridges – 25 stitches knit to 25 ridges, for example. You make 22 squares and join them as indicated, add an I-cord handle and trim, and felt it. (If you’re on Ravelry, there’s a project by another knitter who used Kauni Effektgarn and the entrelac technique to create two gorgeous bags, right here.) It appealed to me to make a project not just from stash, but from leftovers. There will still be plenty of scraps for the Sock Hexagon afghan.

I started this project with alternating stripes of Noro – 2 rows of A, 2 rows of B, 2 rows of A, etc. – and even managed to mess that up a few times. That tells you all you need to know about my recent mental state. (It might have been the cold, or the cold medication. Either way, I cast on with birch Brittany needles, not really sharp pointy ones.)

So, I sorted out the Noro stash and chose a dark colourway of Silk Garden Sock leftover from my Inky Spider Shawl, to alternate with Kureyon Sock in #180. I have a lot of this, in bits and ends, and think it must have been from my infatuation with Kureyon Sock when the yarn was originally introduced. I knit a lot of socks for myself in it because I loved the colours – it looks like I bought a second ball in this colourway to make the socks match – but it really wasn’t good sock yarn for me. Those socks were like butterflies: beautiful, admired, and short-lived.

I started at the bottom of the bag, because it made most sense for it to be dark, and the central four squares there. I knit each one, then pick up the next one along the side to carry on. Seaming as I go. That works for me. Here it is so far:

The black and turquoise striped square was the first one and the bottom needle is pointing at the middle of the bag. Those are the four squares that will make the base. The dark Silk Garden Sock is gone, so I’ve moved into the #289 left over from my Noro cardi. There’s enough #180 to knit for a while. Things are getting brighter now. I’ll knit five on the top, then five on the bottom, just like the schematic.

What do you think? Does your knitting change with your health and welfare? Do you have “comfort knitting”, too?

Damask Bag in SWS – 4

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Deborah Cooke

Well, you probably remember me going on and on (and on) about this fair isle messenger bag. Happy to say that it is DONE and you won’t have to hear anymore about it after today. I finally finished the knitting after abandoning that double knitted strap that wasn’t going to get knitted in my lifetime.

The most recent post on the bag is HERE, and it has links to the earlier posts. Unfortunately, the nifty black I-cord I was showing you in that picture is no more. After finishing the strap, I decided that all of the I-cord had to be in the variegated violet — so I ripped out the black I-cord. I’m not a huge fan of knitting I-cord, so it nearly made me weep to tear out three feet of it. BUT it looks much better with the I-cord all the same colour.

Here it is, ready to be felted:

It’s about 24″ wide and 22″ deep in its unfelted state. My hope was for a bag more like 18″ wide and 13″ deep. I’ve felted a lot of SWS and that seemed about reasonable to expect in terms of shrinkage. I was a bit worried about it being so humungous – would this be the felting project that finally finished off my trusty (ferocious) top-loading washing machine?

Nope. But it didn’t felt the way I expected. Felting is, by nature, somewhat unpredictable, at least the way I do it. Putting the piece into a pillowcase then chucking it into the washing machine and coming back in half an hour leaves lots of opportunity for variation. I just don’t have it in me to stand guard over a felting piece though, pulling it out of the machine at regular intervals, much less to felt by hand in the tub with a plunger. I have made my peace with unpredictability.

Sometimes. On the first ride through the washer, the bag felted quite a bit. The flap and strap hardly felted at all. The design was starting to lose definition on the bag, but the bag was still pretty big. I had to leave it on the top of the washing machine and visit it regularly – poke it, prod it – to come up with a plan. Mostly I had to accept that I was past the point of no return – it was useless as it was; there was no going back; I might as well risk another run through the washer.

Before putting it back into the pillowcase, though, I tried to figure out how to make the strap and flap felt more than the bag on this run. The front of the bag had also felted more than the back on the first pass. So, I rolled up the bag and tied it into a big roll, with the back of it on the outside, much the way a butcher ties up a roast. It seemed that less exposure to hot water and less agitation could make the bag felt less. (Remember that I make stuff up for a living.) The flap and strap were free to move around inside the pillowcase. Back into the machine it went.

This worked pretty well. I made progress. But now, I have to get down to regional felting. Ugh. This is the handwork, in the sink, rubber gloves and hot water, just to get the flap and the strap to felt consistently with the rest. I have doubts. For the moment, I have to let it sit, maybe visit it, poke it and prod it once in a while. It’s still huge – about 18″ by 18″, but mostly I’m not loving it as much as I did (although this photo might change my mind.) Here it is:

What do you think?

Damask Bag in SWS – 3

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Deborah Cooke

So, I’m still knitting on this ginormous bag, and still loving it to bits. Let’s see – I started to tell you about it HERE, then continued the story HERE. This is the third installment of the story!

I’ve finished one side of the bag, in the same checkerboard pattern as the base. Here’s what it looks like now:So, the bottom of the bag is at the bottom of the photo here, folded behind the front and back. The top that will remain open is at the top, and the flap off to the top right. To knit the side, I picked up the stitches across the bottom, then picked up stitches all along the edge of the front and the back. Those I left on spare needles. As I knit the side, I joined it to the front and back by working two stitches together at the end of every row. Once I got up to the top, I worked applied I-cord all the way down the join, across the bottom and up the other side – that makes that nice thick black line. Right now, the live stitches at the top of the side are on that green piece of sock wool.

I’ve flipped it over since taking this picture and am repeating this exercise on the other side of the bag. Once that’s done, I’ll just need to knit the handle. I think I’m going to try double knitting on that, so the checkerboard pattern will be on both sides. I’ll knit from one end, make the strap, then graft it to the other side of the bag once I guess that it’s long enough.

After that, there’s just the felting to be done! I can’t wait to see this bag felted and finished.

What do you think of it so far?

Damask Bag in SWS – 2

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Deborah Cooke

I told you a few weeks ago about a fair isle bag I had started to knit and intended to felt.

Well, here’s an update. (I’m going on about this bag because I really really really like it, so you get to hear about it!)

I’ve finished the knitting of the bag itself and here’s a picture of it flat:

The edges really want to curl, and it’s not entirely straight, but you get the idea. I had to hold the camera over my head to get the shot – it’s that big – so the end of the button loop didn’t make it into the image. Oh well! It is about 66 inches long and roughly 22 inches wide – of course, it will shrink a lot when I felt it.

I changed direction twice with my knitting to get the flowers to all be knitted the same way. The first part I knit actually ended up in the middle – it’s the section with the black flowers with the coloured background: I knit from the black line which is just below the checkerboard in this picture down to the pink line. This will be the back of the bag.

When that was done, I picked up stitches at the bottom (a provisional cast on would have been an excellent plan) and knit in the other direction: I knit the checkerboard for the bottom of the bag, then the panel with the coloured flowers on the black background, casting off at the end. This will be the front of the bag.

I used the same technique as in my Stripey Noro Messenger bag and knit two rows in reverse stockinette where the bag will fold.

Then I knit the flap, starting at the point. I tried to replicate the curve of the original, even though my gauge was completely different and I was knitting in the other direction. It’s not too far off. I knit one flower motif, then 40 more rows of plain black. When that was done, I knit that pink line and left the stitches on the needle. I knit pinky-purple I-cord around the flap, then grafted the flap to the top of the first panel I’d knit. The bag will open at the top and the flap will hang over the front of the bag.

And presto – all the flowers are knit in the same direction AND they will all be right side up when the sides are done. I really like how the shading worked out for the single flower on the flap – the brown at the bottom looks like roots in the soil, then yellow- greeny bits for the leaves and pink/purple for the flowers. A happy accident there.

Since this photo was taken, I’ve continued with the sides. I’m knitting them the same way as my Stripey Noro Messenger bag too – first I picked up stitches across the bottom of the bag (on either side of the checkerboard), and now I’m knitting up the sides of the bag, joining to the front and the back as I go. When I get to the opening and flap at the top of the bag, I’ll knit the handle.

Getting there!

What do you think?

Two Tea Cosies

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Deborah Cooke

Have you been knitting gifts for the holidays? I wasn’t doing so well with that this year. I’ve had years when I knit mitts, and years when I knit scarves, but this year, I’ve been a bit stumped and a bit crushed for time.

But a few weeks ago, I needed a new tea cozy myself and found this old Patons’ pattern in my pattern stash. I thought it would be a perfect quick knit and stashbuster:It calls for a yarn called Beehive Craft Yarn, which I think is gone from this world. (I remember using it a long time ago for doll hair. It was a very thick acrylic yarn, at least three ply.) Instead, I used some Bernat Felting for these two, which I had in my stash. I had the idea that I’d felt it once it was done, but I like the look of it just as it is, and the size is perfect. I was a bit worried about the yarn being a single ply and not spun, but it worked out just fine. This is a quick and easy project – I can knit one in an evening, even when I’m worn out from battling Mages and fighting Slayers. (!)

The idea was that the green one would be a gift, but as you can see, I have two teapots and it wasn’t long before it was put to work right here. (You might also notice that the cables are done differently on the two cozies. The green one has cables the way they’re supposed to be. It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference, but the top is slightly easier to work when the cables twist the right way.)

It also wasn’t long before I was back in my stash, inspired for the holidays. I’ve made more of these tea cozies with Bernat Roving and with Patons Classic Wool Roving. The Bernat Roving is for people who might be inclined to chuck the tea cozy into the washing machine – it’s 80% acrylic. One ball does it in most cases.

Some of these tea cozies are heading to their destinations with a box of the recipient’s favourite tea or a box of shortbread – or both! Those being hand-delivered will arrive with fresh baking. (Yup, my mom will get one with her scones.) I’m quite happy with my army of tea cozies – they’re both useful and attractive. Besides, doesn’t everyone need a nice hot cup of tea?

Have you made any gifts this year? If so, what?

Damask Bag in SWS – 1

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Deborah Cooke

I have a tendency, it seems, to make things more complicated than they need to be.

In fact, I really enjoy when a project of any kind evolves into a much more complicated project than I’d originally anticipated. This is true of books and it’s true of knitting projects. In a way, a project that becomes a complicated beast is a good thing – it means, to me, that the project has taken on a life of its own, and demands its own shape. And when it does that independent of how such a move impacts my own scheduling and other demands, I know it’s not just got a life of its own – it’s got a bit of attitude. I like that a lot.

So, this month, I have been wrestling with a book manuscript that ran off and did that, as well as a knitting project that has run off and done that. We’ll talk about the knitting project today. This was supposed to be straightforward.

Uh huh. Nothing worth doing is ever straightforward, and this bag has proven to be very much worth the doing.

Here’s the basic idea. There is a fair isle pattern which is extremely popular in the land o’ knitters, and is particularly gorgeous in our old fave Kauni Effektgarn. It’s become known as Damask.

Here’s the sweater and quite possibly the first reference to it. (The stripey bits in the middle are for steeks – she would later cut open the front to make a cardigan.)

As much as I like this sweater, I didn’t want to make a cardi like this. I have other plans for my Kauni.

But then, I saw this pattern, for a tote bag, using the same fair isle pattern. It’s called Kauni Damask Understated Bag. (Not sure if you can see this without being on Ravelry, but it’s free to create an account. Go for it.) Since I noticed in the notes that some people were unhappy with the resolution of the design once the bag was felted, I decided to use thicker yarn. Venturing into the almost-endless wealth of the stash, I discovered a hoard of Patons SWS, which is excellent for felting. I decided to use one variegated colourway with black.

Of course, I didn’t actually have enough of either colourway in my stash, so had to hunt down more. This was my first complication. Both are discontinued, but I found the yarn with some online searching. Getting it only required a trek through the snow on a Friday to a LYS which isn’t particularly local. No worries. I had the materials.

Time for the second complication. This bag is worked in the round. You knit the rectangle for the bottom of the bag, then pick up stitches on all four sides and knit up. This works because the Kauni has very long colour gradations. SWS does not. Sooooo, I decided to knit the front of the bag, then knit the back. This would allow the SWS to do better stripey things.

I cast on. As I knit the front, the third complication came to me. I realized that the flower would have to be right side up on both sides of the bag. I hadn’t started at one edge – I’d started at the bottom and I would have to start the other side from the bottom as well.

Okay. After I knit the front, I put all my stitches on waste yarn because I’m not sure yet about the flap. I then picked up stitches for the bottom of the bag on the cast-on edge. (At this point, I realized that a provisional cast-on would have been an excellent idea, but no, I hadn’t done that. This counts as a consideration, not a complication. It’s not that hard to pick up from a cast on edge and since the bag is going to be felted, any extra tension there isn’t an issue.) I knit the bottom, then started up the other side, reversing the colour usage. Just because.

It’s a good thing I really like how it’s coming out. Here’s how it looks, on the needles and unfelted.

Time for another complication? It is! I had been thinking of putting a flower on the bag flap, instead of leaving it plain as in the pattern. That’s why I left those stitches on waste yarn – I was pretty sure I wanted the first colour combo on the back, and I figured I’d just grab those stitches and knit the flap. As I knit the other side, though, I realized that the flower on the flap would also have to be knit right side up. There’s our complication. Instead of carrying on from the back to knit down the flap to the point, I’ll have to cast on the point of the flap and knit UP, then graft the flap to the back of the bag.

I haven’t even thought about the handles yet. There’s got to be another complication there, just lurking…

Do you ever start projects that morph into more than you expected? Do you like that challenge or not?

Stripey Noro Messenger Bag

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Deborah Cooke

Well, this week we have kind of a re-useable bag theme going on here, at Alive & Knitting. First there were bags we could make from reclaimed or vintage sweaters, that had been felted to make them tough. And now, here’s a bag knitted from scratch, ready to be used again and again and again.

But first, a bit of a saga. Remember the sweater I made from Noro Kureyon? Well, I had some leftover yarn and wanted to use it. (Stash management is key, right?) Remember my Dr. Seuss Socks? There’s just something about using a self-striping yarn like Noro in stripes that works for me in a big way. Noro Kureyon is said to felt wonderfully, so I decided to make a felted stripey messenger bag with those leftovers.

I paired the Noro with a colourway of Patons Classic Wool that I bought on a pilgrimage to Spinrite – thus, yes, doing some responsible stashbusting while pursuing a responsible project. This must have been a test colour because it’s not on their site. ($9.99 C for 8 x 100g balls. That’s not temptation. That’s inescapable acquisition.) Actually, there were a number of colours available at the mill, all of which had one ply that had a long graduated colour change. This is a mustard with the coloured ply changing through reds and purples. It worked well with the greens in the Noro Kureyon.This is the massive project that has been taking up my needle time. After all the knitting was done, I wanted to add I-cord. Ugh. There are about 10,000 miles of applied I-cord on this bag. It’s not strictly necessary, but it does make the edges look so much better. Here’s a shot of the I-cord in progress – it’s done on the left but not on the right:See how the I-cord neatens up those edges, and makes the bag look more crisp? I get really bored knitting I-cord, but I love the results.

I found some amazing buttons in my stash – I bought these because they were so wonderful, but never found a project for them. (Until now.) They look like pieces of amber, but have little lines inside them – Mr. C. says they look like rutilated quartz. I’m taking his word on that.

And here’s the finished bag before felting:It’s HUGE. The edges wanted to roll so I pinned them down – here’s hoping they just stay flat once it’s felted.

And here it is, after felting and finishing. Of course, it has a zipper and a lining, because I’m kind of compulsive like that.

I LOVE this bag! What do you think of it?

My Ravelry project page is here.

The pattern is posted as a free download on Ravelry right here.

Alive & Knitting

Knitting and other tangled webs we weave

Category Archives: Felting

A Knitted Purse

Market Bag

Sipalu Felted Bag

Garter Stripe Square Bag

Damask Bag in SWS – 4

Damask Bag in SWS – 3

Damask Bag in SWS – 2

Two Tea Cosies

Damask Bag in SWS – 1

Stripey Noro Messenger Bag