My brother requested I make him this “aloe vera” leaf bag… this is the first knitting project I actually designed from scratch – it turned out sort of ghetto, but it was good practice! I used super bulky yarn for the main body (wool-ease thick & quick) and I wanted to make the strap entirely out of hemp, but it was too difficult to work with so I carried the hemp cord along with some natural colored worsted weight wool.
The lining is made out of three different patterns of beige fabric (a bunch of fat eighths sewn together) and it has a zipper which was soooo hard to do – especially with Roxy sticking her nose under the sewing machine the whole time. I hand sewed the lining into the knit bag and I’m not very pleased with the way it all turned out. Some day I will confiscate the bag from Scott and sew it in more securely.
And a close-up of the intarsia design (and shroom shrinky dink zipper pull!) Because the yarn was so bulky and the bag is relatively small, the design lost a lot of definition on the edges, so I embroidered in satin stitch around the edges:
Roxy helping me block the knit pieces before I sewed them together:
yarn details:
Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Wood and Grass
super bulky
80% acrylic, 20% wool (wood)
86% acrylic, 10%wool, 4% rayon (grass)
machine wash & dry, do not iron (I scoff at Lion’s washing instructions!)
cost: $6.99 per 170 gram/106 yd. ball
Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Natural Heather
worsted weight
80% acrylic, 20% wool
machine wash & dry, no iron
cost: $2.99 per 85 gram/197 yd ball
held together with Hemp cord ($7.99 for a big spool)
findings
shrinky-dink shrom zipper pull with embroidery floss cord – my own!
zipper $1.75
fat eighths $5 for an 8 pack?
project details
pattern: my own
gauge: don’t remember…
needles: 13 straights
intarsia chart: my own (used custom graph paper generator at: http://www.tata-tatao.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html)
yarn used: 1.5 balls of the wood and 1/2 balls of grass; minimal amount of worsted & hemp
time: 15 hours-ish… maybe more lost on the zipper
total cost: about $23
notes
don’t knit for Scott again…
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