Fair isle bag

Somewhere, I think in an email somewhere, I spotted a bag. Fair isle, bright colours, felted to some degree. I thought 'Self.. we can do that'.. alright so perhaps it was more 'ooh! I can do that!' and a rush to the stash to go digging. All wool. Check. Bits and pieces as it was stripes and prime for using up bits. Check. Solids and handpaints. Check. A bit of handspun too, my first successfully navaho ply no less. Go digging for some fair isle patterns and find a booklet of fair isle sweaters that are woefully too small for me, but that I've always been fond of. Perfect!

Patterns are for suckers, so after some experimentation (aka ripping out the bottom twice) I settled on 2 strands and 9 mm needles for the bottom, single strand for the colourwork on 6 mm needles.

For the lace worker who is used to size 30 cotton and 2 mm needles? This is like speed crack. Each row actually adds length! Noticible length! I worked two patterns and it started to look like a bag. (I also started thinking that attempt two on the size of the bottom was probably a better choice, rather than hugely too big, but that's besides the point).



Now I need to actually finish this and felt it and decide on what to do for a strap.