Turquoise Market Bag

According to my Ravelry project logs, which are so handy, I began this eco-friendly bag on February 19th and finished it February 23rd. This is a standard turn-around time for me, although I took a bit of a break in March. Time to catch up on the blogging!

This bag is made from one skein of Designer Sport in "Pool" or turquoise. It is an amazing busywork pattern, because the mesh portion requires only that you know how to chain and single crochet.

This is a pattern posted by Patons, and although I love the bag, I wouldn't use this pattern again. The handles were the biggest pain I could possibly devise, and so I cheated when I made mine. The top rim was also not entirely to my liking. However, it does expand extremely well; unstretched, it is actually quite tiny!

This bag would easily fit in pockets, purses, and the like, and should carry yarn, produce, books, and anything else you'd like to stick in it, provided it isn't too small!

It is also fully washable, and only cost me $2 to make. I have a list of other, similar patterns in my Ravelry faves, and I'll let you know how they go when I've gotten around to them. Maybe when I've experimented enough using cheap yarn, I'll be able to justify making some out of organic cotton!

Panel One, Done

Ahh, the sweet sensation of success. Last night, I parked myself down in front of my television set for a few hours and finished off the first panel of my bag. I haven't sewn in any of the ends yet, but it looks gorgeous.

Of course, this means that I still have one full panel to go. My measurements are a bit off, at 13.4 inches across and 19.6 tall, off from 14 inches by 19. This is mainly due to one dropped stitch at the beginning, and my inability to count rows. Replicating it should be easy enough though.

I did run into some trouble shaping the handle. Because this is my first time reading a pattern, and I've been doing it alone, I made one mistake when beginning the shaping. Instead of attaching a second ball, as is recommended, I decided to use only one, and simply cut it off when I was done the first side.

This would have gone fine, if not for one small oversight on my part. You work toward the middle, back, toward the middle, and back, and so on. Ideally, I would have done this for one side, cut it off at the corner of the panel, repeated this for the other side, and then beginning at that corner, made one more row, chained 13, and then continued on the one side.

Alas, I ended up having to cut and attach the ball of yarn three or four times because I ended the row in the middle rather than the corner, which would have resulted in one handle having one more row than the other! Oh well, that was easy enough.

The chaining didn't go as well. I thank my lucky stars that when I crocheted back over it, I did not drop a stitch, because each was very difficult to determine, and nearly impossible to shove my hook into, despite my best efforts to make a loose chain. Simply crocheting over that 13-chain probably took me well over half an hour. Now, to repeat the process!

In other news, I finally got my ravelry invitation today! I've spent all afternoon cataloguing my yarn, hooks, this project in-progress, adding the pattern to the database, joining groups, and much more! Find me as starlitafternoon.

Tips for Starting a Project

I have to say that so far, starting up a crochet project has been the most difficult thing about the learning process. The work tends to curl, the stitches look uneven, and crocheting into your chain is no small feat. Even recognizing the stitches at first can be hard, leaving you with the task of ripping out your rows and trying again.

The piece of advice that got me started on my soon-to-be lovely bag came from my Mom. There is no rule that says that you need to do the chain or the first row onto it using the size of hook that the pattern dictates.

The pattern for my bag has asked me to use an 8.00mm size hook, which was a bit awkward for me, because I had practiced chaining and single crochet using a smaller hook.

In order to get the bag off the ground, I chained using the 8.00mm hook, but did my first row of single crochet using a 6.00mm hook. I also crocheted into the back loop, rather than both loops. Then, I continued the project using the 8.00mm hook and crocheting through both loops.

This allowed me to bypass some of the tightness, and helped me with the frustrating task of digging into a thin little chain with the monstrous hook!