The Knitting Fiend

After machine knitting my beige felted purse, I reorganized my method of knitting and I made this purple purse.

I’m much happier with this purse because it’s much, much easier to make than the beige purse. The body of the purse took me about an hour– and that’s only because I stopped and took several pictures as I knit. The straps took about 10 minutes? Not very long.

I’m working on a generator now. (You can see the draft web page here.)

I’m only going to write a generator for this very simple lunch bag style bag. If you want to make some really cool purses, buy Natalie’s book, 101 felted bags..

I decided I liked my hand knit felted purse so much, I’d try making a machine knit purse. I charted out a rectangle with the top missing and knit this. I really like the purse, but I’ll never make one this way again!

Why not, you ask? Well, my first thought was I’d cast on with waste yarn, knit from side to side, and fold the piece into a “U” shape. The front and back of the purse would be made from the vertical legs of the “U”; the bottom would be made from the bottom of the “u”. To make  the sides, I’d pick up 2″ worth of stitches from the bottom of the “U” and knit up, picking up the live stitches as I went.  That techniques is called seam as you go, and many knitters like to do that. I’d then have created a pattern that anyone with any type of single bed machine could make. I thought that was a good idea.

In principle, it was a good idea; it would make a really nice purse.

So, I made the main part of the purse, folded the fabric into a U and started knitting and seaming as you go.  I discovered one problem: I abhor “seam as you go”. I’d rather sew seams. After “seaming as you go” about 2″ up one side, I decided I hated doing it so much, I couldn’t possibly bring myself to continue 8″ up the sides and then make a second side! I took the fabric off the machine and decided to do something else!

Obviously, I perservered, and I like the purse. Still, I’m not going to describe how to make this particular purse, because the final technique is in efficient. While working on this purse, I thought of much more efficient way to machine knit a purse. I’m going to make one of those, and then describe that pattern.

Here is the purse! I showed it to Bijou, and she thinks it’s very cute. She said she’s going to go out and buy Lion Brand Fisherman yarn to knit herself one.

I was worried when I put this in the laundry. I didn’t know if the felting process is predictable. What if the purse didn’t shrink at the same rate as the swatch? It didn’t shrink exactly the same amount, but it was close. The final dimensions are 5 1/2″ tall (see picture); I had wanted it to be 6″ tall so it’s a bit shorter than expected. The purse measures 15 1/2 inches around; I had wanted it to measure 16″ around. It the bottom is about 2″ wide; I had wanted it 2″ wide. So, this is very close, especially when you consider that I can’t decide if the two edge seam stitches are part of the body or the bottom of the purse.

There was one surprise: The strap is 30″ long!

Remember I said it was 26″ long before I washed it, and I was hoping it would shrink to 20″? (I like short straps.) Well, the strap grew 4″ in length; it ended up 30″ long. (This makes the strap a standard length for a shoulder bag. If I were smart, I’d probably just claim I intended it to be 30″, and let everyone think I’m a genius. )

Now that I think about it, this isn’t surprising. Before felting, garter stitch is fairly stretch in the lengthwise direction. If you examine the felted garter stitch, it seems to be stretched completely, and then felted. So, the strap ends up longer.

Actually, I knew I was taking a risk when I threw the purse in the wash. The strap is knit in garter stitch. All my calculations were done based on my stockinette swatch. I didn’t knit a garter stitch swatch to find out if it shrinks at the same rate as stockinette. It turns out the long garter stitch strip doesn’t shrink, it grows. Lucky for me, I like the 30″ length too!

Monday, I’ll be writing up a purse pattern generator, with complete directions.