I showed this bag as a work in progress a few weeks ago and now it's finally done. The bag is a kit from one of my fave places The Little Knit Kit Company. Most of the kits are aimed at children and newbie knitters - indeed I have myself already made the Black Cat Knitting Kit and the Seaside Cottage. However, their new Surf Van bag kit is for the more experienced knitter, which I suppose now includes me.
The most difficult part of the kit is obviously the front of the bag with the surf van design on it and you need to do this part first as the back of the back is knitted to match the size of the front. The instructions say you can make the bag by stranding the yarn across the back or using intarsia. I opted for the latter.
This was where I discovered that knitting bobbins were my new best friends. I managed to have nine of them dangling off the work at once without too much of a hiccup. There are a couple of errors where I didn't change colour at quite the right time but I don't think it's very noticeable? I find you really have to focus when knitting from a chart as it's easy to get one bit right and then completely overlook another change.
I did end up with a few holes in the knitting where I had first joined in a colour but these were easily fixed when I weaved in all the ends.
After the excitement of the front (except the weaving in part, which went on a long, long time), the back of the bag is very straightforward - all garter stitch on 4mm needles until the back matches the length of the front (the front is stocking stitch so you can't just count the rows). I inexplicably ended up with a few pearl stitches in the back, which I hid on the inside.
The bag strap is just 11 stitches of garter stitch continuing as long as you want the strap (or until you get bored - I kept trying it on every 10 minutes towards the end to see if I'd got there yet). I reinforced my strap by slip stitching some blue grosgrain ribbon to the inside to prevent stretching.
I back stitched the two sides of the bag right sides together with yarn, turned and then sewed the strap a couple of centimeters inside.
As the project suggested, I made a lining for the bag from a beautiful floral fat quarter I found in my stash. I machine sewed the two halves of the lining along three sides and then turned over the top to the right length for the bag. I sometimes find that bags can gape a bit so I inserted a magnetic closure into the lining. This can be a bit scary as you have to poke through the fabric with sharp scissors to make the holes for the legs of the fastener to go through, but it looks okay.
Finally, I slip stitched the lining into the bag by hand, just under the top edge of the knitting.
I thought the kit was great value at £17, including all the yarn and some 4mm needles. You just need to supply the lining fabric. There was plenty of yarn left over, so no concerns about running out midway. I think the bag is really practical and usable and I'm looking forward to wearing it over the summer.
Melx
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