It was sitting around different areas of my house giving me inspiration whenever I looked at it, then I spent some time on ravelry to come up with a project. I found this! The "raveler" used Noro Taiyo, and her nest tote inspired me to make my own. This pattern suggests using needles a few sizes bigger than what the ball band says - I used 6.5 mm, in retrospect I wish I had used 7 or 7.5 mm to make the bag fabric a little more mesh-like.
Instead of knitting this flat, I used Judy's Magic Cast On, and knit in the round from the bottom up, on two circulars. I had 41 sts on each circ (as per patt) and knit the rows where the pattern called for purling (since I was working in the round). I had studied the colours of the skein and decided that knitting in the round would also make good colour distribution of dark on the bottom of the bag, and handles. That all worked out brilliantly.
I stopped about two inches short of the desired depth of the bag, and then knit each side separately on straights. This allows the bag opening to be bigger since the I-cord finishing/handle tends to pull in the opening a bit. The finished size of the bag before working the I-cord was about 10 inches wide and 10.5/11 inches deep.
The applied I-cord was new to me. There are many tutorials I found by googling to learn this technique. After a few tries it went smoothly, and the handle itself zipped along too. I knit the handle about 16 inches long before grafting it together.
The strap stretched a lot, which I wanted, and now it is a very comfortable shoulder tote!
Julia! You are blogging like a mad woman! I love it! Great bag, I favorited yours on Rav and I'm gonna make me one too....eventually! Have a great weekend!
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