new post and a new technique!

Well, I survived a weekend with my parents... but barely! (I kid, it was great, even if I still didn't get to D.C.) I've decided to post the pictures of my notions bag, plus the no-seams technique that I used to make it. Most of you have probably done it before, but hey, I took pictures of it, so I'll post them and perhaps, someday it will be useful to someone... or not...

So, here are the before and after photos of the notions bag (remember, this was my first try at felting and it was totally by hand... I don't think there's any difference...)

So, without further ado: Before:



And after:



I stupidly forgot to put in a quarter for sizing purposes, I now realize why people do that (not that I didn't really get it before, but now I will forever remember to do so...). In any case, it looks exactly the same to me, except that the dye ran a little and the colours are now softer... and possibly the edges and the triangle lie down more smoothly from having been semi-blocked during the drying process. Any suggestions on how to re-felt???

OK, and now for technique. I believe that it's called double knitting, and what you do is cast on double the amount of stitches that you would want for one side of your bag (thus it must be an even amount of stitches). Every row is the same: *K1, Sl1 pwise*. Once you have worked this row enough that your bag is the depth that you want (leaving room for shrinkage if you are going to felt) take 2 dpns and hold them together opposite the needle with all the stitches on it. Slip (pwise) the first stitch onto the front needle and the 2nd stitch to the back needle. Continue to alternate stitches from front to back needle like this: (apologies ahead of time for the blurriness of the picture)



I lucked out - because this was a variegated yarn the red stitches were all going to the back of the bag and the purple to the front in this row. when you have all the stitches on the two dpns your bag will magically open up and you can flip it inside out so that you see the right side of a stockinette stitch (up until now you would have only seen the inside of the bag, which would look like reverse stockinette or garter stitch). Now you can cast off the front of your bag and continue to make a flap on the back!

As I always ask at the end of class: Any questions??