The Bag That Nearly Never Was

With a visit to Sewjourn looming, dragging my crochet around in all sorts of weird and wonderful bags, just wasn't going to cut it anymore. Plastic bags, enviro shopping bags, cloth bags. You get the idea. It was time I bit the bullet and get myself organised. I've had a heap of 8ply part balls left over from previous projects, so set too with an 8mm hook. I knew I wanted a round unstructured bag, but that was about as far as I had thought about shape. So I started with a basic circle with 12 dc (or sc if in USA). The next round increases in every second stitch with 2 dc. I've continued to grow the circle, increasing in the same 2 dc stitch. I wasn't worried if it was a bit "wavy", because I knew it would be an unstructured bag. When the base was about the size of a dinner plate, I stopped increasing which formed the sides.

I knew I didn't want to line the bag, so felting seemed like the logical thing to do. The risk of running out of a colour was high, and I was determined to keep to using scraps, and not open a new ball. So the logical thing was to use a strand of 2 colours, and change over 1 colour on the next row.

I struggled to know what to do about handles. I was keen to do something wooden, but struggled to come up with something I was happy with. The main problem was that the opening to the bag is quite large, and any manufactured handle just looked too small. So the bag sat, and sat, and sat for weeks while I got on with other things. 

On the weekend, I finally got my act together and decided to come up with a solution. I had made the bag big on purpose, so I could fit the yarn, project, needle roll etc all in one bag. No more going away and not having the vital bit with me. I didn't want to restrict the opening, but did want to close it in when needed. So the logical solution seemed to be to make it a draw string bag. I wanted the draw string to also form the handle, so made it about 30% larger than the opening. I was worried about the draw string not moving freely if it was felted, so left it unfelted.

To give a full gathered top, while leaving room for the "handles", I've positioned the 3 belt loops at each end and left a larger space between the 2 sets to allow for the handles to form.

Given it was looking like this may never end up a finished bag, I'm actually happy with how it came together in the end. (And no more enviro bags)