Bag of the Week 8

Felted Wool Purses

A few years ago I was really into felting hand knit items.  My husband’s aunt raised sheep, and I had a lovely supply of Icelandic wool yarn which was not only beautiful but had sentimental meaning as well.  It was a dream to knit and felted beautifully.  The other thing I love about felting is that it makes my sometimes-not-too-perfect knitting less apparent.  Felting hides a multitude of sins. 

The first thing that I knit for felting was a hat (which is the subject for another post in the future – the before and after pictures are hilarious).  I then switched to purses and made quite a few.  I primarily used two patterns by Fiber Trends and was able to create unique looks by varying the type of novelty yarn I incorporated into the wool as I knit.

These two bags were created using the pattern called Party Purses.

I used naturally colored Icelandic wool for the body of the bags and added Lion Brand Fun Fur in at the top (the dark purse used three colors of Fun Fur all knit together).  The knit bags start out much larger than the finished ones – as the wool felts and shrinks it compresses the eyelash yarn, making a nice, dense trim.  The bags were felted in a lingerie bag using my top-loading washing machine and Wool Wash soap by Eucalan.  

The handles of the purses were both created with additional yarn twisted into a thick cord using a tool called the Spinster.

All of the cold weather we’ve been having has me thinking about knitting wool again.  Good thing I’ve still got some of that wonderful Icelandic in my stash.

More Kanzashi

In my recent post Love in Bloom I wax poetic (sort of) about Kanzashi, folded fabric flowers that can be used to adorn all sorts of items.  I love the trend of big flowers that people are wearing these days, and I wanted a flower pin of my own to wear.  Starting with some moth-eaten scraps of raspberry coat-weight wool I fashioned a 7-petal flower.  For the center I covered a large button with a raspberry and white silk houndstooth check.  I wanted to be able to wear this pin on my leather jacket but did not, of course, want to put a pin through the leather.  Instead I used a mitten clip on the back which I can clip onto the collar or zipper edge of my jacket.  When placing it on my collar I made sure the teeth of the clip were centered over the stitching along the collar edge so as not to leave an impression in the leather.  Love it!