The Crafty Bits: Messenger Bag II (F)

We're going to jump from one extreme to the next...from an outright painfully HARD project to one that was so boring it nearly makes me weep to sit here and reflect on it.

Two years ago I made a very awesome and beautiful Boucle Messenger Bag as a Christmas gift and I loved that bag so much I vowed to make myself one too. I ordered the extra yarn, modified the pattern a tick and then it just sat there...loitering around in my To-Do box, never getting anywhere.


Iit would still be sitting in that box...quietly collecting dust; probably for a very long time, except my sister mentioned in July that she was looking for a funky messenger bag. I probably could have just knit the same pattern and called it good, but if I'm honest I still want to make myself one of those Boucle bags and I'm sorry, you can't have the same bag as your sister...it's a rule [I'm pretty sure.]


So, after considering various non-bag gifts [I originally typed that non-hag gifts, which is something else entirely.] I came up with a pattern for a larger felted messenger bag, which was instantly more appealing because I could 1) Use On-Hand Yarn, 2) Felt Something and 3)...well, there really wasn't a three, mostly I could try this felting thing. Hooray!

However there was one thing I did not consider, and that is that felting is essentially a reason to knit in the round until your brain curls up and dies. While brain-less knitting can be a welcome thing; I, personally, can only welcome it in very small and very limited quantities. If you consider that this bag is 21"x14" after it's felted, that is a shit-ton of boredom. The only redeeming feature was the striping [That I added to the pattern about 5 rows in when it dawned on me just how boring this was going to be and which is probably why I'm still here today and not petrifying in my favorite overstuffed chair.] which turned out to kind of "make the bag" so to speak, giving that necessary "funky" element.




All in all the bag turned out nicely. I would have chosen a different secondary yarn, if I had known that they wouldn't felt together as nicely as I wanted and I may have made it smaller if I had known it would take so bloody long to do the size indicated in the pattern. At the end of the day though, Kara [my sister] likes it and that's what counts.

******

Yarns: Knit Picks Yarn of the Andes in Redwood & Paton's Classic Wool in Taupe
Pattern: Messenger Bag from Knitting for Peace