Kiss My Knits!

You may remember the pink felted bag I made, to which I had incorrectly affixed the handles. It was for a little girl named Brianna, and she had already seen the unfelted version, so I really did have to make another one correctly.

Well, it’s finished!

She said she wanted her name, so I put that on there, and she wanted some flowers. Flowers didn’t seem to look quite right with the name also on there, so needle-felted some spirally doo-dads instead.

This is the Fiber Trends “Flowers On-The-Go” tote. The pattern has been corrected since I made it the first time, but there’s still an error in the closure flap. Frankly, three errors in one pattern doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me to buy their other patterns, but I may give it a go. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve learned enough since I made the first one that I could probably wing it and make my own patterns. Here’s hoping Brianna enjoys it. Her younger sister has already put in a request for a blue bag, but this one with a pocket on it! Whee!

Well, I had a long car trip this weekend, so I managed to finish up the “Flowers On The Go” tote and show the unfelted version(note dinosaur for scale) to the young lady who’ll receive it as a birthday gift.

This was a challenging pattern. Not necessarily challenging because it had me doing new things, but because I felt it was unclear in spots. It had two outright inaccuracies, one involving the number of stitches picked up for the bottom band, and the other involving the three-needle bind-off which attaches the handle to the top triangles. I wrote to the author of the pattern this morning, and she confirmed that yes, they fixed that about a week after it was released, but I guess I got one of the old copies. The author, Bev Galaskas, was very nice, though, and eager to fix anything else that seemed odd.

Nonetheless, it came out of the washing machine and looked really great! My husband thought it looked like a miniature sweater. It took 2 1/4 skeins of Lopi and a lot of time and effort, but it was all worth it. I just needed to block it and let it dry, then needle-felt the young lady’s name on it, and…

and…

CRAP!

I attached the handles sideways. In other words, instead of running parallel to the long side of the bottom of the bag, they were perpendicular. ARRRGGGGHHH!!!

Why does this matter? Think about holding a paper grocery bag closed. You don’t bring the short sides together, as that would be awkward and bulky, and would gape. If you carried it at the end of your arm by your side, it would bump your leg. So you bring the long sides together. The mistake I made brings the wrong sides together. And of course I placed the flap for the button based on where the handles are, so that’s wrong too.

That’s not really something you can fix easily. Frankly, I think I’m better off just re-doing the whole damn thing tonight. I guess I’ve learned a lesson about double-checking EVERYTHING, because it didn’t occur to me that I should watch the order in which I was doing the triangles and i-cord, but now that I look back, obviously it was going to make a difference. Grr. Well, live and learn. My ‘bright side’ disposition leads me to say that at least I can use this bag as a canvas to practice needle-felting on.