My first project in the book I’m going to tackle is the felted knit envelope bag which actually the second project in the book because the first project is a scarf with a knit stitch and since I have completed two already I decided it was ok for me to skip that one. 🙂 Here are my yarn choices. They are in skeins, so I don’t need to hand wind them.

time to knit a bag

I was a little worried at first about combining two different yarns but it hasn’t been too big of a deal. It is a little difficult to see where the stitches are so I have employed the use of some awesome knitting tools. First one is a stitch/row counter. It helped me keep track of the number of stitches in each row. I think I will braid some yarn in order to make a necklace out of it. It even has a lock on it so I can stop wherever. Second is the use the purple knit stoppers. It’s great to place them on the needle points when I am finished knitting and I do not have to worry about the stitches falling off the needle.

I have skipped stitches a couple of times and with the fuzzy novelty yarn it was hard to tell at first, but you just carefully pull the yarn to where the skipped stitch is and place the stitches back on the needle, carefully, and start knitting again.

The bag is basically a giant rectangle and could be made into any size. It just depends on your intended use.  You fold and then whip stitch the edges to create the pocket which turns it into a bag. I’m using both threads to do the whipstitching. I’ll do a separate tutorial on the whip stitch because it is used in knitting, needlepoint and a hand stitch for finishing in sewing and at the beginning I had a bit of trouble making sure I was going through both layers to connect them. That’s probably because I was too busy watching television as I was finishing. :/

knitted rectangle

fold

whip stitch close up

This is also a felted bag which really concerns me. Something about doing all of this work just to place it in the wash to shrink rubbed me the wrong way. How much will it shrink anyways? It’s currently about 15inches by 10inches. But here is how it turned out. :/

How to Felt:

First I needed to get all of my materials, the bag, a zippered pillowcase, towels, jeans, and quarters for the washing machine.

felting supplies

put knitted bag in zippered pillowcase

put pillowcase and jeans in the washer

feed the machine

Place on small load, hot wash, and check after awhile, 10 minutes, to make sure it is felting and take it out when it has reached the size I want and also not let the cycle go into spin or rinse.  Now maybe the washer I chose in my building is old or maybe because it is a commercial machine or I picked the wrong wool yarn but I don’t think it looks like it’s suppose to..

finished?

So it was suppose to turn out to be a thick fabric where you can no longer see the stitches and shrink a little bit and it didn’t. So, maybe I’ll try the felting process again?

So felting fail, but no worries that’s why it’s good to practice.