This is the first item I have ever made for Kasia that she actually asked for. We visited Stitch Space in Webb City, MO together, and she was blown away by the beautiful yarns they have there. At that time, they were having a Berroco Modern Cotton trunk show. She was flipping through a Berroco pattern book, and this caught her eye, so I bought the book. At least a year later, I started on it.
Here is the Ravelry link to the pattern: Susan Bag by Amy Christoffers The price of the single pattern is $6.00, but I think I paid $12.00 for the whole physical book at the store. Oddly enough, I'm the only Raveler who has saved a project from this pattern.
I bought cotton yarn, since the pattern calls for cotton, but I got cheap stuff at Jo-Ann instead of the more expensive Berroco. Don't worry, I spent plenty on yarn at Stitch Space, too. I started working on it, and the yarn I had was just too fluffy. It didn't define stitches well, and it looked like it would fuzz up something fierce. The Modern Cotton is a cotton/viscose blend, it's a little lighter than worsted weight, and it is also mercerized or has some sort of finish that makes it smoother. It's the yarn I used for Elsa's sweater that I finished last January. Elsa's Sweater
I went in search of a good quality acrylic, and I ended up buying Premier Yarns Deborah Norville Everyday Worsted. I had made the scarf for the Red Scarf Project out of it, and it felt good. It's billed as anti-pilling. We shall see. I bought four skeins of it, or a total of 800 yards. The pattern called for 627 yards of the Berroco, so I have most of the fourth skein left.
Here is the completed back. The solid part at the bottom of the picture is the top of the back of the purse. It's knit in seed stitch (knit one, purl one, yada yada, but doing the opposite on the wrong side of the fabric. Otherwise it would be a rib stitch.) After 2" of seed, it switches to stockinette (knit the right side, purl the wrong side) with seed stitch on either side. That keeps it flat and looks cool. All of the increases and decreases are done in the seed stitch on the sides.
The diamonds are made up of bobbles. There are several ways to make large and small bobbles, and these are very small. This is my first project that includes them, and it will be the last for a very long time. There are 15 diamonds made up of seven bobbles on each of the four sides. This takes place over 24 rows of knitting, done on the right side of the fabric.
As I said, this is a small bobble. The pattern instructions are to knit to the location where the bobble will be placed. On the next stitch, knit the front, back, and front of the stitch, turning it into three, and move it to the right needle as usual. Then you turn the work around and purl those three stitches. Then you turn the work around again, slip the first of the three onto the right needle, knit the second two together, and pass the slipped stitch over the one you just made out of two. Now you're back to one.
I started out doing it as described in the paragraph above, but this is fraught with danger of a needle slipping out of the work while you're turning it over and over. I had seen some videos of backwards knitting, and I decided it was time to learn how. Here's a link to Staci Perry's excellent video that describes how it's done.
Knitting Backwards - Staci Perry www.verypink.com
So, by backwards knitting, she is doing the same thing as turning it over and purling. Remember, by knitting on the right side and purling on the back, every stitch on the right side is a knit. They're two sides of the same coin.
My first few bobbles were kind of loosey-goosey. I learned that you have to pull the yarn tight on both sides of the bobble, especially when you're purling across the whole back of the piece. You also have to consciously poke the little ball to the right side for your tight stitches to hold it out in the front. I got the hang of it pretty well, and I used a needle to tighten up the stitches around the earlier ones after the fact.
I finished the back. After doing some increases every 10 rows, you can see that the seed stitch on the ends has tapered out. After finishing the back, the instructions say to bind off 11 stitches on either end. That's what makes the horizontal jog in. In the picture below, the back of the purse is in the lower part of the picture, the bottom is in the middle, and the front of the purse is in the upper portion, live on the needles. Hey look, 15 more bobble diamonds to do! Yippee!!!
The bottom is 4" of seed stitch. Once you reach that goal, you cast on 11 additional stitches on each end so it's the same width as you left before. Then you knit the front of the purse so that it is a mirror image of the back by decreasing stitches instead of increasing them, finishing with 2" of seed stitch for the top edge of the front. Finally, you bind it off.
Jason was visiting one night while I was working on it, and sweet guy that he is, he was asking me about it. He posed the question of stretch. Doggone it, he was right. The acrylic does stretch more than cotton, so I decided I'd need to line it.
I found some cute yellow cotton with white daisies with black centers and bought a yard of it. I folded the fabric in half and laid the completed purse in its flat state with the edge of the fabric at the midpoint of the purse bottom, and I just traced around it with a pen. I used the sewing machine to stitch around it the same way the purse is assembled. The flaps created by the bind-offs and cast-ons are sewn to the adjacent edges of the bottom, and then the sides are sewn up. Then I hand-stitched it with thread to the inside of the purse, being careful not to run the thread clear through to the right side of the purse.
Here is the lining in the assembled purse body.
The last step is to create two 18-inch long straps done in, you got it, seed stitch. They're supposed to be nine stitches wide, and you just knit and purl those nine stitches until you reach the length. What with the stretchiness of the yarn, I decided it would be better if the straps had a double thickness, so I knitted them in the round as tubes consisting of 19 stitches. You have to use an odd number of stitches when knitting seed in the round so you don't wind up stacking knits on knits and purls on purls, getting the little cobblestone effect. Since I hate using double-pointed needles, I used a 40" circular needle and the magic loop method. Here is a link to a great magic loop video by Liat Gatt.
Liat Gatt - www.knitfreedom.com
I sent a text to Kasia with a picture, and it meets with her approval. Now I have to work on some continuing education and only knit a tiny bit. I also have two library books that must be read in the next two weeks.
