The Chicago Red Line Enters the Station

Just a warning... today's entry ends with a wooly cliffhanger...

The other project that spent a lot of time on my needles over the weekend was the second of my "Chicago Variations". Red Line is meant to be a small go anywhere hand bag that knits up quickly and fits into even modest yarn budget.

Red Line Shapes Up

This pic shows off the before felting shaping and how I decided to use the color. I wanted coloration that was suggestive of a two-toned leather bottomed bag. To create a little more continuity for the flap joining area, the last two rows are done in the same color as the bottom of the bag.

Double I-cord Goodness

I changed the straps a bit. I didn't want to do a pair of single I-cords again, instead I wanted something with a flatter quality. Julie had shown me a bag where she used "double I-cord" for the handles. It gave the handle a flatter, less round quality that I thought would be perfect. So, I thought it might be reasonable to give it a try here.

It Wouldn't Be Chicago If There Wasn't Some Graft

I kept the handle short -- makes for both easier knitting and a trendy look. This is the model just before the grafting process. Lately I'm very into Kitchener. Once I figured out that I shouldn't pull the yarn too tightly when weaving the grafting strand in and out, Kitchener went from something just useful to something I think is very cool. I weave loosely and then go back and snug things up after I've grafted all the loops together. That means I can make the stitches look exactly how I want them to.

Sassy Little Flap

And here's the bag after the grafting was completed and I added the flap. I changed the construction of the flap so I could get a different shaping effect. All said and done I had over half the skein of the light colored yarn left over and I think I've got a 1/3rd of a skein or so of the dark color. So in terms of time to knit and amount of yarn required I definitely met my goals with this project.

Now you're probably expecting an "after" picture to go with all this before stuff. And I have to admit, the washer experience has occured. But one of the hazards of posting to my blog late at night/early in the morning is that I don't have the benefit of good natural light. So stay tuned... tomorrow the results of my little experiment will get revealed in the the bright light of day.

TO BE CONTINUED...