I bought this kit in order to learn new skills. I had never done stranded colors before as well as most other things featured in that project. The promised result was so incredibly beautiful that I just couldn't pass a chance to become someone who can produce this. This goal was fully accomplished. I actually can't help telling everyone who hasn't seen me for the last 3 weeks that that last time that saw a different person, one who hadn't made this amazingly beautiful object. As for the learning objective, I've learned more than I expected. Though I am a bit weary after the final assembly phase, I am glad that I have 3 more kits to attempt achieving utter perfection. Actually, the first bag is nearly perfect, despite being the first experience in everything but "nearly" isn't "absolutely". And now I know more.
First things first. I wouldn't have taken on this large scale multi color project had I not encountered the two-color knitting technique which has one thread one each hand, one continental style, the other english style. Needless to say, I had to learn the english method which I had never expected to use in my life. This innovation made two-color knitting almost as fast as plain stockinette. For me speed is critical. I have too many projects in the queue to spend much time on any single one. The person in the video is certainly not speedy but it's only a demonstration. I got quite fast at knitting with two threads after just a couple of rows (450 stitches rows to be sure). One question still remains: What is the best way to hold the right hand thread? (see related questions)
One of the videos on stranded knitting I saw mentioned that for consistency the background and the foreground thread should always come from their respective dedicated sides which is easy to accept without questioning. Then they said that typically background thread is coming from the right. I took is as an arbitrary convention and learned only after completing the strap of the bag that at least in my case it's more than a random choice. I actually ignored this recommendation completely while making the strap and every row I checked which color appears in it more and put it on the left hand since knitting from the left hand is so much faster. Most of the time the background stitches outnumbered the accent color and thus ended up on the left. I found that in order to be able to control the right hand thread for any kind of efficiency I had to have a firmer grip on it than the left hand thread. So the tension on the right is higher and my strap pattern turned out quite differently than what they show in the instruction booklet, it looks sort of faded. Fortunately, this difference caught my attention and between the strap and the main body of the bag I realized what the reason was. On the body I religiously kept the background thread on the right and the effect is rather dramatic.
One more note about wrapping the floats. I started knitting the strap without understanding what that was. I saw the video but couldn't understand what they were doing there having never tried two-thread knitting myself. It turned out not so bad after I learned it with my own hands. Ironically, wrapping balances the speed of the two hands. It's faster to knit from the left thread but it's much slower to wrap the right thread while knitting from the left. Wrapping the left thread however, doesn't slow you down at all, so once I had some practice (and knitting this bag offers plenty of practice) I was wrapping every 3 stitches for a nice woven look of the back side. Not that it matters what the back of bag fabric looks like since it's lined anyway, but it gave me a lot of pleasure to know that it's perfect and also it is functional because it ensures even, smooth stitches on the face side.
Purling with two threads turned out to be somewhat more challenging. Normally, Fair Isle knitting is done in the round and purling never happens. In this bag it does. The widening of the strap for the bottom of the bag is done with short rows which means you go back and forth knitting and purling the pattern. I guess it's more difficult only because the threads are in the front of the work and thus they get in the way a bit. I had to figure out how to wrap the floats in purling since I couldn't find any reference to it on the web. It is basically done exactly the same way only in mirror image. It's not entirely trivial to find the mirror image of a knitting technique, but once you figure it out it's as simple as every genius idea. Again controlling the right hand thread is a challenge. I hope somebody else can share a clever trick for it. Link to Question here.
Having learned the right methods for the task, I had no problems following the instructions for the strap and the front/back of the bag. The only thing I would change is the length of the circular needle. The instructions recommend 32"-60". The longest needle Knitpicks sells in this gauge is 47" so I grabbed it and regretted it. Shuffling the stitches along this length cost me some 5% of the time. And that happened despite that fact that I was knitting very loosely and the strap ended up being much longer than it should be . Next time I'll use 32". It should make things faster.
It took me two and a half days to finish the strap and about 3 and a half days to complete the body of the bag. To be honest I was knitting obsessively, stealing every opportune moment, while putting kids to bed, while pushing the swing, while playing with the baby on the floor. The process is not tedious at all because the pattern moves along all the time. It's like a a video game where you want to get to the next step and then the next. Every block of work is rather small. 8 rows to the short row section, then 12 ever widening short rows, then 12 ever shortening rows, then finish off with 9 more rows and the first piece is finished. The circle is even more addictive, because every three rows it decreases by 20 stitches. It starts with a few more stitches than the strap but quickly drops below and then keeps accelerating the pace of progress through the chart. It is very satisfying. In 6 days I have produced the most gorgeous knitting I've ever done. Picture here.
That was the end of sailing through the project. The flap was supposed to be done in intarsia technique. I had done some simple intarsia before but facing this pattern left me puzzled. So I looked up many reference materials on the web, videos and articles about intarsia and I ended up being even more confused. Even the interview with the author of the bag mentions that the difference between the flap and the rest of the bag is in not leaving the strands behind the work. How exactly? With all those leaves, stems, shading on the roses how can I start a different thread for each section? What are the sections in such a complex pattern? Every article or video I found mentioned that intarsia is good for simple patterns preferably geometric shapes. While its multi-color look has something in common with cross stitching it can't handle the same level of complexity. Well, the roses are certainly more suitable for cross stitching than knitting. I decided to separate the picture into several two-color sections and do them in stranded technique. 2 for leaves on the bottom against the background color, 3 for roses with shading against the main rose color, the spaces between the roses are separate threads and the scrolls on the sides are two different two-color sections. It turned out to be a pain to knit and the result is rather shabby. Picture here.
I wasn't happy with this addition to my masterpiece. I was wondering if there was a better way to knit in intarsia, maybe by wrapping the threads a couple of stitches outside of the actual color area so that the color transition is not so obviously a fault line of tensions. Eventually, I made a difficult decision to redo the flap mostly as a stranded technique. I kept one thread whereever possible: the side scrolls still had to be different threads of course, but then I had only one thread for the leaves under the roses, I skipped the leaves above the roses completely, and the roses were two colors stranded across all three roses. I still had to start a different thread for each channel of the background color between the roses. I liked the result much more (possibly because I was simply more skilled by then).
The most important change however was adding 2 background stitches on each side, one for selvedge and one to frame the scroll. Since until the flap I had followed the instructions closely with impressive results I originally obediently picked up 100 stitches for the flap as the instructions commanded and only then realized to my dismay that the pattern uses the first and the last stitch of these 100, with the intricate scroll reaching the very end. I thought there was no excuse for this. There is no way not to distort the picture by using the end stitches in it. So my second version improved considerably having these 4 extra stitches. For the same reason I added one row on the top. Original instructions call for binding off right after the color row. It doesn't look good. I started binding off just one row later than in the chart and it made the edge look a lot cleaner and clearer. I wonder what they were thinking when making these instructions.
This is also an unpleasant part of the project. Surprisingly, the instructions for he I-cord seems to wrong in the booklet. Since I'd never done it before I made about a foot of it before realizing that I have to learn more about it. It just didn't look like a finishing cord. Sure enough I found instructions similar to the ones that came with the bag but with an extra yarn over. And that made all the different. I had to redo everything. The process was laborious and imprecise. It just didn't lend itself to a fast monotonous procedure which yields uniform stitches. There is too much random motion in this process. At least the way I learned to do it. Interestingly, most methods for I-cord described on the internet are very different. I still need to learn more about the anatomy of this beast to figure out how to make it perfectly and reasonably fast. As it was I could probably make a whole other bag during the time it took to finish the edges of this one. Also the tension of the cord makes a difference. I was picking up every edge stitch for the most part and then realized that I probably should have skipped some evenly. The cord ended up looking a little bunched. Just a tiny bit and probably nobody will ever notice, but I know.
Lining the bag properly is crucial. Without the lining it is neither usable nor does it show off its beauty. The instructions say very little about the lining. I found that the hardest fusible interfacing like Pellon 71 is the right kind. I also agonized over the fabric for the lining. Thinking that I shouldn't spend a lot on the lining I ended up buying several remnant pieces from fabric stores until I found a perfect fabric on sale. It was a suit fabric, so it was rather dense and elegant in the color perfectly matching one of the yarns. Since my bag turned out quite a bit bigger than intended, and since I dislike rummaging inside a bag for something I need often, I had to make compartments. For simplicity I made 3 cargo pockets on the flap side: one large, and two symmetrical small ones on the sides. The big one can hold my wallet or a needle case, and a lot of miscellaneous stuff. It closes with a magnet snap. The smaller pockets can accommodate a cellphone, a camera, scissors, creams, and cosmetics depending on what I use the bag for. The whole bag closes with another magnetic button. Pictures here.
The bag needs a stiff interfacing but with it the flap stays open almost vertically. So the bag needs a good closure. The magnetic closure is easy to apply and easy to use but it has problems. It pulls the fabric when you try to open it. One mistake I made is that I didn't dare to cut the interfacing to pull the legs of the snap through it. So I applied the snap only to the fabric and the first time I tried to pull the magnets apart the fabric came unglued from the interfacing. This is pretty bad if you want the bag to look professional so I had to sew around the magnet almost invisibly to attach it back. So either magnets are not suitable for this bag or they need to be attached to the firm interfacing.
I understand that fusible interfacing should never be applied to the knit fabric of the bag so it leaves no firm parts to attach the bottom half of the magnet to. Maybe a different closure is needed.
The suit fabric chosen for the lining was not only a pleasure to work with because it stays put and has clear stripes for guidance. It also makes sharp looking seams and creates an overall expensive quality impression. I am glad I didn't compromise on it after all the efforts put into this project.
In order to give the bag the maximum shape and stability I sewed the seams of the lining very closely to the interfacing occasionally catching the edge of the interfacing in the seam for extra strength. Making those seams on a stiff object with perpendicular wall was a peculiar challenge.
That's a separate project. The lining was a complete bag which I actually used as my work bag while finishing the I-cord. If it is attached only at the open edges then the bottom of the bag will slide and puff too much. But the lining is too stiff to maks the seams at the bottom, so I had too just catch the bottom seam in a few places where I could reach. It's fine now, the bottom of the bag isn't going anywhere.
The edges were relatively easy to attach, only it has to be done carefully and consistently. I started with a crazy idea that I should attach the base of the I-cord to the back side of the lining. Only later I realized that it was completely wrong. The needle must go through the front side of the edge of the lining so that the I-cord sort of sits on top of that edge wrapping it entirely. Otherwise the lining sticks out too much. It needs to stay inside the I-cord, it's the lining after all not an equal half of the bag. picture here.
Having finished this bag brings a pride of accomplishment, a wealth of new skills and certainly an amazingly beautiful thing to behold. I carry it everywhere now to show off of course, and use it around the house as a work bag for the new projects. It's big and comfortable enough, but most of all it's beautiful.
Still, it's hard not to notice that the four bag kits sold by Knitipcks conveniently use all the 83 colors of their Pallete yarn, each kit comes with 21 ball of yarn, so only one is used twice in different bags. The rest are disjoint sets. This is a wonderful selling trick. I bought all four kits in large part because I knew it would give me the whole collection of Pallete yarns. Yet, the bag doesn't really need all these colors. Some of them are used for a few stitches only and can easily be skipped or replaced. I actually skipped some of the colors on the flap because I thought it looked too busy. The kit comes with 1050 grams of yarn. I weighed the finished bag without the lining and it was 170 grams being massively oversized and as I happened to make it. My bag is nearly 20" in diameter. The intended 16" bag would use even less yarn. So the glib comment of the designer (see below) that even with looser gauge you won't run out of yarn is fully justified. It's probably possible to make the bag with fewer colors for a more dignified look. I might be tempted to change the colors of one of the remaining kits to test this theory.
In any case I am glad I learned about the color scheme for purple on silver Fair Isle work and can't wait to use in on a sweater or a vest.
