Chicago Bag: January 2004 Archives

When we last left our heroine, she was bravely preparing an unsuspecting knitted item for a trip into some serious hot water. Did the bag return victorious from its transformation? See for yourself....

Chicago, Red Line Edition

This is that natural light picture I wanted to get. The colors are pretty close to true. This little bag just wanted to happen. Normally it takes me two washer cycles to get something to the size I'm expecting. This time, it took one -- granted, I did the "heavy" cycle (which just runs longer) so maybe that made the difference. Final felted dimensions: 9" wide, 3.5" deep, 4-3/4" tall. The strap is 16" long. Perfect size for a wallet, a cell phone and a few other little carry along items.

Chicago Variations

Red Line is shown in this picture with Blue Line to give a sense of size and perspective. I like the shaping of both bags, but Red Line is actually closer to what I was striving for when I was first trying to put my vision on paper. Red Line's is a little more circular, Blue Line is a little more angular.

Red Line from the Side

The side tapers more gradually than the side of Blue Line did, and some pinching is required to pull the shape together. The slight bulge in the front is due to the fact that I stuffed it with some cotton towels and hadn't quite gotten it prodded into the shape that I wanted yet. (As an aside, this bag needed a bit more manipulation than Blue Line to get it into a shape I liked, it's not obnoxiously fiddly, but it does require taking a look at it in multiple directions).

Front and Flap Detail

And this is an up close shot of the area under the flap. For some reason I am particularly pleased with this little detail even though it won't be noticed much in normal usage.

On the overall, I'm pleased with the result. The shaping worked and my new flap design almost turned out the way I wanted it to (see below for more on what I didn't like). I love the dark olive color yarn felted. It has faint fuzzy yellow flecks that give it a lot of depth. The jury is still out for me on the 9460. I go back and forth between liking the grey marble haze and thinking it makes the bag look dusty. But I think the combination is good.

So what didn't I like... well, take a look at the closeup of the flap...

Snaggletooth Flap

There are two issues for me here. One is that the edges are a little jagged instead of smooth. This, as you might have guessed, is due to where I did my decreases. When I did a test felting of this shaping, the edges weren't so pronounced, but I also felted the test piece down a little harder. The second, and by far the most serious, issue is the little indentation on the left side near the tip. I think this is more due to felting pixies than to the design, but I don't like it at all. I'm thinking there might be some scissor action that needs to go on here -- that's the great thing about felt. It's just another fabric.

Fortunately, I think a very slight modification to my flap design will solve this problem -- I need to add a selvedge stitch and do my decreases inside this stitch.

Would You Buy a Used Car from This Woman?

I just couldn't leave you without putting this goofy image up. I couldn't help but laugh at it, so up it had to go. Perhaps I have a future in used car sales? The picture does serve a purpose, too, because you can see the bag holding my wallet and phone.

So, I'd love to know what everyone thinks -- good and bad. Don't be shy and don't be afraid to be honest!

P.S. If you haven't checked out Janet Scanlon's felted designs lately, now's the time to check in. Her new Mercury bag is incredible! And she has a free pattern for a very cute felted bag that could be used to hold business cards or a little treasure if you're in the need for a quick project.

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...

Chicago and Siena

I was feeling scattered today and you can see it by the stuff on my desk. In the foreground is the next version of Chicago. I'm working my way towards the shaping, but the base of this bag doesn't have too much shaping to speak of. Behind Chicago is the left front of Siena. I probably would have gotten farther on this, but I got annoyed with juggling two balls of yarn after I decreased to create the ruffle and set it aside.

In the far back of the picture is something that is not knitting, but is fun. For Christmas Mom got me a stocking stuffer -- a Kirigami Calendar -- which is the Japanese art of folding and cutting paper. You can check out this site to play with a virtual Kirigami tool (be sure to read the instructions before you head into the program... it will make it a lot easier to play with). Since it's early in the year yet, all the shapes have been pretty simple to fold and cut. All I need is my fingers and a pair of little scissors. As they get more challenging I will probably need an exacto knife. When I am not playing with yarn, it's an awful lot of fun to play with paper.

Speaking of playing with yarn... guess what I got in the mail yesterday?

Plassard Merinos and Louinie

Isn't this fab? It hopped across the ocean with a skinny rabbit. The lovely fuzzy stuff is Louinie -- the stuff Becky used when she was constructing the brim of her perfect black bucket hat. I just adore the color -- and the nice note Becky enclosed said the Louinie color was a special run that's not likely to be made again (they didn't even make labels for it). So I will have a very special hat indeed -- made from lovely yarn from a very nifty new knitting friend. How could such a project not have good vibes?

Louinie Up Close

One thing I think is important to say about the Louinie -- it's not your average novelty furry yarn. It has a very sophisticated quality to it. And rather than the eyelash being a separate strand wrapped around a wool core, the eyelashes are somehow a part of the wool strand. Very cool and very classy indeed.

Once I finish Chicago, I think it's going to be Bucket-O-Chic time.

So. There I was, working on Siena when wet wooly vibes started to radiate out of my stash containment area. I have a lot of goodies to be felted right now, so that, in and of itself, is probably not surprising. What did surprise me is that the wool that started to talk to me was not all that Manos del Uruguay, but some humble but lovely Cascade 220 that came back with me from Columbus.

After my first success with a full sized version of Chicago, I knew I wanted a somewhat smaller version of the bag. But, since I have almost no patience for repeating the same pattern twice (even if it is a pattern of my own creation), I didn't really want the medium-sized version to be just a scaled down version of the first one. Scaling is just about math. I decided that I wanted to play with the shape a little more to create something narrower at the base and taller.

And I wanted to play with more color.

Cascade 220 in 9460 and 9448

These colors are a little more dynamic in person, but still have a subdued, reserved feel. The 9460, while light, is definitely not bright and punchy. It has greyish highlights that I can't wait to see felted. The 9448 is a heathered version of a classic dark olive. My husband has a suit in this color. I think the two look very classy sitting next to each other here on my desk.

So I took the ideas that were banging around in my head, downloaded some knitters graphpaper and started to play around with curves and colors. By early evening I had the shape together, had figured out how I wanted to do the strap, and I re-engineered the flap using seed stitch so that I could get a little bit more coverage than I would if I stuck with the short rows. (I still have to felt my test swatch... I'm curious about what it will felt like and if any of the texture will remain after felting). And then I put it into a document format that I could knit from.

Usually when I put a lot of effort into something, I like to put it aside for a little while and let it simmer. But this one I just couldn't. I really want to see how it's going to turn out! So an invisible cast on and some odd garter stitch rows later...

Could it Be Another Bag Bottom?

I know. It's not interesting yet. But it's not a big bag, so hopefully it won't take me too long to get the fun parts.