Rowan Big Wool Bag

Warning: May Contain Ranting...

When I learned to knit back in June, the course instructor said one of the hardest things was finding kits and projects that were easy enough for a true beginner.

This bag is made from a Learn to Knit with Rowan kit that I picked up in a sale a while ago. There is not a chance I could have knitted this as my first project or even my 20th. Let me explain...

The kit itself is lovely. It contains two balls of gorgeous Rowan Big Wool (this shade is called smooch - how cute!), plastic 10 mm knitting needles and the pattern leaflet. You can choose to make either this bag or a scarf and both look nice. As you can guess, I opted for the bag.

The leaflet contains short, basic guides on casting on, knit stitch, purl and casting off. The second row of the bag pattern requires you to do an increase on a purl row using make one and purling through the back of the loop!!! In my humble opinion, this is not a beginner stitch and, to add insult injury, it is not illustrated in the instructions.

In fairness, if you can manage the pearl increase, the whole thing is not too bad and knits up quickly. You make two sides, a flap, a gusset and a strap in a mixture of garter stitch and stocking stitch.

Now for the making up. The leaflet contains  a series of paragraphs on blocking and various seam types, but  these are really general. The actual making up instructions for the bag are completely vague and don't tell you what stitches to use at all. I used a combination of mattress stitch and whatever-would-make-it-hold-together stitch.

The kit did contain one excellent tip. It suggested sewing petersham ribbon on the inside of the strap to prevent stretching. Once I'd been on the internet to find out what petersham ribbon was (again a little explanation would have gone a long way), I sewed on some robust but sweet cupcake ribbon I had in stash and it worked a treat. In the absence of any instruction, I handsewed the ribbon on with ordinary sewing thread in small stitches on the surface of the wool.

The kit didn't make any suggestions about how to keep one's bag closed, so I sewed a large press stud to the underside of flap and then covered it over on top with a fabulous Czech glass button from The Bead Store.

Happily, there was some leftover wool and I fashioned a small matching purse using rib stitch with a stocking stitch flap. This is topped with a beautiful handmade glass button from Lush Lampwork.

Don't get me wrong, I think the finished bag is lovely but there is no way I could have made this until recently and that's after 6 months of fairly intensive knitting practise. Maybe I'm just slow...

Melx