Isn't it cute?! It's my mom's birthday tomorrow, so of course I had to make something. I used some leftover Plymouth Suri Merino in celery green, a Vogue pattern, and added this picot bind-off for the edging and i-cord for the drawstring. It would have only taken a couple of hours if only I wasn't so stubborn...
What slowed me down was some damn Lion Brand chenille I got for $1 a skein this summer at Christmas Tree Shops - they had a big closeout, red and black only. I bought it thinking it would be just the thing for festive little projects like this one. You know, little holiday gift bags.
Anyway, I cast on and got a few inches in. The thing was mammoth and the Turkish cast-on bottom was all holey. Thinking I just hadn't yet mastered the technique, I ripped out and did it again. This time the cast-on looked fine. After several more inches, I noticed the v's of the knit stitches were tiny, separated by big fat ladders. The cast-on area now looked horrible again, all stretched out.
A non-stubborn person would have given up at this point and gone to another yarn (God knows I have a little kicking around.) But no - just one more try, this time pulling really hard. This is what I ended up with:
Eww. So I went and looked at the sleeve of the yarn to see if maybe I was way off with the needle size:
Hmm...no knitting needles appear on the label. (I know the picture is all blurry; humor me.) Off to the website...where it says: product is not recommended for knitting. Doh!
Oh well, lesson learned. Sometimes it has to be about the process, I guess, otherwise we'd never learn anything. I love the bag, I learned the Turkish cast on, and mom will get a little goodie bag tomorrow. The only thing I would do differently is make the i-cord a wee bit shorter, but I will definitely be making more of these.
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