The Knitting Fiend

I’ve made some progress on my felted purse!

I’m going to describe how I’m making the purse now. I’ll try to write up full directions later. The approximate directions may be enough for people who feel comfortable designing and calculating their own purses. The directions will also show you some techniques you might want to learn.

To knit my purse, I first decided on the basic shape: a square bottom purse at least 6″ wide, 2″ deep and 6″ tall. I want a few rounds of garter stitch at the top because garter stitch doesn’t curl, and it tends to be stable. I decided I wanted to knit the purse from the top down and add straps after finishing most of the purse. (I haven’t completely decided about the strap placement.)

To achieve the width and depth, the body perimeter needs to have a 6″ front, a 6″ back and two 2″ sides. The total perimeter will be 6″ + 6″ + 2″ + 2″ = 16″. Using the stitch gauge from the felted swatch concluded I needed 16″ x (16 stitches /3.75″) = 68.3 stitches. To make the directions easy, I rounded up to the nearest multiple of 10. So, the main body of the purse will have 70 stitches.

I thought a bit, and realized that tops of purses tend to stretch. In addition, garter stitch tends to be wider than stockinette. So I decided to cast on 9 /10ths as many stitches are required for the body; that comes to ( 9/10 * 70 stitches =) 63 stitches. Using size 10 circular needles, I cast on 63 stitches and knit circular in garter stitch for about 1 1/2″. When the garter stitch was long enough, I finished with a purl round. On the next round, I increased 7 stitches evenly resulting in 70 stitches at the end of the round.

Now, I want the purse to be at least 6″ tall. Normally, I’d just knit until the purse measured 6″. But, since I plan to felt this, that won’t work. It will shrink when I wash it; my swatch shrunk from 5.25″ to 4″. I expect the purse will shrink the same amount. So, to compensate, I multiplied as follows: 6″ * (5.25″/4″) = 7.9″. I rounded up to 8″, and knit until the purse was 8″ long measured from the cast on. At that point, I had knit a cylinder, which you can see to the right.

Now for the hard part. I want the bottom to be about 2″ wide. That’s 8.5 stitches; I rounded up to 9 stitches. Then started the bottom. (It’s actually easy, but I get email from people trying to figure out saddle shoulders, and they get lost at procedures like this. Often they type me the exact directions, and tell me what they did. I will add information based on what people generally do wrong.)

Here goes.

Before begining, I advise examining the figure to the right which shows bottom in progress. Your goal is to make that strip and cause it to be seamed to the body of the purse in one fell swoop.
Notice the “ridges” on the side? Those will be formed when you either “K2tog” or “ssk” you will be instructed to create in the following directions.

• Begin with the outside of the purse facing you. Knit 2 stitches together. Knit 9 stitches. Slip a stitch, slip a stitch, knit the two slipped stitches together. Stop! Don’t worry that there are zillions of stitches on the left hand needle. Ignore them. Turn the work so the inside of the purse faces you. You are going to be working back and forth! ( For reference, if you read normal directions, you’d be told to do this: K2tog, k9, ssk. That’s it! You’d be expected to notice that the directions say “row” which means you are knitting back and forth– which means, you have to turn the work. Earlier parts of the directions say “round” which meant you were knitting circular. )
• Row 2: Slip 1 knit wise, purl 9, slip 2 stitches. Turn the work so the outside of the purse faces you.
• Rows 3, and 5 : Repeat row 1. (That means, you will be knitting the two slipped stitches together at the beginning, then knitting 9, then doing a slip-slip-knit type decrease.)
• Row 4, 6, 8,: Repeat row 2. but modify the directions this way for row 6: Knit like row 2, but when you finish, slip an extra stitch at the end of the row. (So, you’ll slip 3 stitches total.)
• Row 7: Knit 3 tog, k9, slip 1, slip 1 , slip 1 , knit.

By the time you work row 7 you should start seeing what is happening. You are knitting back and forth, and “consuming” the live stitches on the circular needle. It should start looking like the picture above and to the right. (Note that I sort of pulled the fabric to make the edge stitches look nice. I find they look a bit wobbly when I am knitting. If you think yours look weird when knitting, try stretching in the direction of the bottom strip.)

Some of you may wonder why row 7 is different from 1, 3 and 5. Normally, when you knit an odd row, you “consume” one stitch on each side of a strip you are making along the bottom of the purse. That forms a ridge on the edges of the purse. In row 7, you consume 2 stitches on each side of the strip. Consuming an extra stitch prevents the bottom strip from being longer than the sides of the purse.

In principle, you can keep right on knitting by repeating rows 1-8 until only 22 stitches total are left on the needle. There’s only one problem. You will start to notice the stitches won’t make it all the way around the circular needle.

The solution is simple. Find a second circular needle of nearly any old diameter; you are going to use the needle as a stitch holder. Slip the unworked stitches onto the “stitch holder” needle, leaving the 11 stitches for the bottom on the working needle. Now, for convenience, slip about 5 stitches from the “stitch holder” needle on to each side of the working needle. (You’ll have 11 stitches + 5 stitches + 5 stitches on the working needle.) Continue knitting the bottom by repeating rows 1-8 slipping additional stitches off the “holder needle” and onto the working needle as required. Keep doing this until there are only 11 stitches on the “holder needle” and 11 on the working needle.

Break the yarn, graft the 11 stitches. (I’ll describe this tomorrow.) Then knit the straps. I’ll describe this when I decide what I’m going to do, and do it!