Advice Well-Taken

When you guys speak, I listen. To prove it, I offer up photos of the swatch I knitted at your suggestion to test the giant black MIL sweater's felting potential (complete with 4 inch square in red thread for gauge testing). You probably can't really see the difference in texture from the photos but it worked brilliantly. The Cascade Eco+ firmed up nicely so I don't think she'll have the stretching problems any more. However, thanks to swatch testing I didn't overfelt it--the texture is still very sweater-like. The sleeves shortened just enough while I was able to block out the zipper section so it didn't ripple.

Pre-felting swatch:

Post-felting swatch:

Another case in point: following your helpful advice, I took the Rather Huge Noni Bag to a shoe repair shop to have the leather handles sewn on (since my New Jersey suburb isn't rolling in saddle shops--LOL!). He did a wonderful job of making the handles strong and secure.

Here's the up close photo of the shoemaker's stitching.

And here's my Noni Bag all ready to carry yarn, books and the kitchen sink. Did I mention it's Rather Huge?

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Thank you all for the incredibly useful, truly fabulous suggestions! What would I do without the yarn geniuses here on RTY?

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

The Noni Bag's Progress

Remember the Noni Bag I started way back when? The one that was for me to keep? Well, I finally finished knitting it and felting it and thought you'd like to see the almost-finished project. Here it is pre-felting (with my trade paperback sized book for scale).



Here it is being blocked:



I have to admit that I had to improvise a bit to block something that is three-dimensional and has folds in it (on the sides). I stuffed it with towels, used giant binder clips for the inside folds (as per the instructions) and then pinned the heck out of the outside. I had to unpin and repin the front edges in order to flip it and change the towels so the bottom side dried more quickly.

Here it is felted (with my book again):



I haven't quite gotten around to sewing the handles on yet (something else I'm doing for the first time) but I placed them on it to give you the general effect. I think the leather handles will jazz it up nicely.

Up close and personal.



Felting still seems almost miraculous to me in the way it changes the texture of the knitting. I love, love, love the colors and feel of the bag. You were all right about the defined bottom: after felting, the stitching blended right in so it looks great. (And couldn't we all use well-defined bottoms?)

The only thing I'm not 100 percent pleased about is the proportions. I think it's a little too wide for its height, something I wouldn't have expected from the pre-felted shape. However, I'm learning that felting tightens more in one direction than the other and I need to adjust accordingly.

Does anybody have any advice about sewing leather handles onto felted knitting? Thread recommendations? I'm learning as I go here and I want my handles to be strong enough to carry lots of knitting and books around.

Noni Bag Knitted, for all the wrong reasons

Ta-da! There's the pre-felted Rather Huge Noni Bag...and it is indeed rather huge. That's my new book sitting on top of it for scale, and it's not a mass market paperback, it's a TRADE paperback.

In the midst of the madness of marching band season, I found time to finish knitting my Noni but it was not a good thing. Here's the story:

Monday night I attended my first Devils hockey game of the season at the brand new Prudential Center, a.k.a. "The Rock". It's a spectacular new arena built especially for the Devils in Newark, NJ. I had a grand time exploring the vast new spaces and buying myself a cool pin that says, "She-Devil". The evening went down hill from there as the Pittsburgh Penguins humiliated my beloved team 5-0.

As my husband and I departed from The Rock, I was gawking at the giant mobile police communications van parked in front instead of watching where I was walking. Oddly enough, there was a curb there and I fell right off of it, twisting my left foot in ways a foot was never meant to be twisted. Ouch! Since then I've been ensconced on the couch, foot propped on the coffee table draped in an ice bag, and, of course, I've knitted, hence the finished Noni Bag.

The timing is pretty awful since this weekend the marching band is performing at a football game on Saturday and championships (!) on Sunday. So I'm babying my foot, driving my family crazy by ordering them to carry things for me since I have to use a cane to get around, and crossing my fingers that I'll be able to put weight on my foot come Saturday.

Sometimes I do the dumbest things! Anyone else want to share a "how-could-I-be-this-stupid?!" story?

As promised: Noni bag picture

That's my Noni Blob, I mean, Bag with 14 stripes completed. That leaves 6 stripes to go. I haven't made much progress beyond that because...



...it's marching band season. I'm Head Roadie for my daughter's high school band so I spend a lot of time loading and unloading trucks, repairing worn props and cheering on the band. We had a great competition on Sunday: we won FIRST place in our size group! It's especially impressive because we're the smallest band in the group. Wahoo!

If you're interested in why I do this, I have a piece about it on my website at http://www.nancyherkness.com/fromthegarret/garret_archives24.shtml .

Does anyone else have children in a marching band? Or were you in a marching band yourself?

Noni Bag Countdown

Sixteen stripes done. Four stripes to go.

Happy little knitter

That's me! Happy again. I love working on my Noni bag now that I've finished Darth Sweater. The beautiful soft greens are soothing to the eye. The stitches are nice and big so I can see them easily. I'm using Addi Turbos (my favorite). I adore the stripes because it's so easy to see my progress: two stripes done, three strips done, four stripes done, and so forth.

My one mistake: choosing to make a "well-defined edge" around the bottom. I usually like things neat and squared off but in this case I don't like the noticeable line which I created (by following the instructions). I'd rather have a gentle curve. Perhaps the felting will soften the effect somewhat. (Yes, I considered frogging it but decided to leave it due to sheer laziness and hope the felting concealed my blunder.)

Knitting in the round is one of the craft's all-time brilliant inventions. For some reason I can knit much faster and more comfortably than I can purl. Being able to knit constantly and have it come out in stockinette stitch seems nothing short of miraculous to me.

Do other folks here prefer knitting over purling? Or vice versa? Or are you ambi-stitcherous?