Another gift finished!

Here's the Yankee bag ready to go in the wash, then finished. It was definitely a form of improvisation, but then I always do that when I knit bags. I may fuss seriously over fitting a sock perfectly, but bags are like scribbling, just a fun way to make a gift. I am the same way with beadwork: the animals must be exactly right, but when I make bowls it's for fun. I try new ideas, practice new techniques, try to convert mistakes into new methods, and I do this all as fast as I can. I usually set a few basic rules, like no sewing seams and only garter stitch allowed (knitting) or black beads are always single and the other colors are worked so there are three of one color touching at all times (a fun mapping technique to play with when doing beadwork).

I ended up doing a 3-needle bind-off of the active side seam (because it's quick), then picked up the loops in the long-tail cast-on and did a 3-needle bind-off on that side, too. Fulling masked the minor difference in appearance. I picked up a loop per ridge around the top, knitted a round, purled a round, bound off the sides, did garter up (with little dec triangles to take the 13 st down to 9) and grafted when I ran out of yarn.

I expected the blue to bleed so washed the bag alone in a half washer of hot water. Having a high water:fiber ratio decreased the probability of excess dye latching back on, plus I used lots of detergent. Dried it until it was just damp, but it was still too stretchy so ran it with a normal load of laundry (wash and part of the dryer cycle until it was only slightly damp). It has more visual texture than I prefer because it's garter and I would have liked stockinette for this project, but didn't have the time to spare for facings. DD's teacher will like it (and not know the difference...).

June's December 7th post is spinners' eye candy. Beautiful!