Experiment #1

I've had a few ideas floating around my head for awhile now, and so last week I decided to proceed with one of them. I knit most of my bags in the round (so they are all one piece) because it works and I like the look of the felted result not really having any seams. But I've been thinking about a lot of different things, and knitting in the round is limiting to a certain extent. There are some color work designs that I want to use but just haven't been able to figure out how to make them in the round. So I decided to do something with seams, i.e. make the base, front, back and side panels separately and seam them together at the end.

Have I mentioned that I hate seaming? I really do. I don't know why and usually it ends up being less of a pain than expected. But I always dread doing it.

So I planned the bag out in my head. (If I could sketch, this sort of thing might be a lot easier.) I made the base and then picked up the stitches on each side to do the panels so in the end, I only had the side seams to sew up. I've seen some felted bags with the seams on the outside and I thought it looked kind of cool so I decided to seam my bag on the outside. It makes for a chunky sort of edge. I could tell as I knit that things weren't really working out as planned. They were kind of working, but not entirely. But I decided to push forward so I could learn from my mistakes.



Once I got it all seamed and the strap knitted, I knew by looking at it that it wasn't going to work out. The color work design would probably be alright, but the construction of the bag was all wrong. I almost frogged it as to not waste the yarn. In the end, I decided that I would go ahead and felt it because one, felting is always surprising and it could end up working out and two, even if it did turn out to be a disaster, I could learn something useful from it. Maybe I could figure out how to make it work.



I wasn't even really sure that this color work pattern would felt well. But I knew if it did, it would be pretty awesome.

In the end, the bag did not work out.



Excuse the horrid picture, but it's still in the drying phase. The color work design definitely worked out. I think it looks pretty neat, but as I suspected, the construction of the bag just kind of sucks. It's all lopsided and wrong and the seams on the outside look too bulky and awful. Of course my husband likes it, but he always likes my mistakes the best. Perhaps this will be his new "man bag". (Um, not really.)

It hurts a little bit to lose the yarn, but really, it's okay. I know I need to figure out some other way to use this particular color work design on a purse. And I know that I don't like seams on the outside, at least not the way I did them here. I also learned that I still don't like seaming! I'll probably try it again at some point, but I think I will approach it differently. I also think if I had put two handles on this bag instead of a strap, it might have worked better. Live and learn, that's how it goes.