circled squares

I’m calling this done, my pattern-testing knit project… I love the shape, (a lovely round-bellied urn), and the color choices that I made worked out well. The pattern was clearly written and easy to follow, and the knitting was intriguing without being frustrating. I am quite happily surprised at the nice large size that the bag turned out to be, at about 12” x 13” it will make a nice purse or knitting project bag. The base of the bag is particularly well designed, and the Lanaloft that I used for that part made a very sturdy felt.

A side view of the base of the bag,
clearly showing the triangles of unfelted knitting (bronzy-green salvaged single-ply),
and the great shaping of the "foot" created by the knitted-in tuck

The only difficulty I had was that not all the yarn felted evenly, and (despite my best efforts) neither the washing machine or hand felting, or boiling! in soapy water was able to get the Noro or the salvaged single-ply yarn to felt, while the other yarns felted very quickly, and my attempts to get the recalcitrant yarn to cooperate made the already felted parts rather too solid.

I learned two new techniques while making this bag. The foot of the bag has added shaping by a kind of knitted tuck, which seems like an excellent addition to any future knit and felted bag projects. Also the instructions for making the twisted cord used for the bag handles are so much easier than the way I did such things before.

the bag from the top down, with a glimpse of the twisted cord drawstring-handles

I'll most probably make this bag again; I can envision it in a number of different colorways, and it'd be fun to try it in a sport or fingering yarn, for a smaller "bag of holding" I used eight different colors of yarn, all worsted weight, and my recommendation for the future is to be certain that the chosen yarns are ones that felt at the same rate more or less.

Here is what the bag looked like before felting:

before felting, about 16" x 16"