Diana and her finished French Market Bag!

From Diana: This photo shows my boyfriend's cat, Walter, who decided to use it as a bed one night (sadly didn't manage to get a photo of him in it, even when we put another of his favourite knitted sleeping surfaces- ie, Scott's scarf- in there!).

From Diana: Woo Hoo!! I've finished my bag!!! I finished knitting last week and on the weekend the bag went into the washing machine, which felted the multi-coloured wool very effectively, followed by a bit of time in the kitchen sink giving the red base a bit more work to felt it to the same extent. I shaped it over a plastic tub that was (fluke!) the perfect size, and have already used it a couple of times to carry knitting, books, and bits a pieces to and fro.

From Darrow: Here is my first picture. It's a rough sketch of what I sort of want.

From Jaynierose: Well, yesterday was the big felting day. After finishing the knitting on friday, I was all ready. I had to put it through 3 cycles on washing machine machine so that it really shrunk up. I ended up cutting the knitted handles off and replacing them with fake black bamboo ones sewed on with red ribbons. I'd been wanting to use these for months and was happy with the result. I was going to put flowers on it, but ended up with one pink bow. Very retro....I'm very happy with the reults and am now going to make one for my sister in law and mum for upcoming birthdays. I have now become a felting devotee:)

From Jess: I really enjoyed knitting this, it was my first time using circular needles - 4.5mm - and I was much amused that knitting every row produced stocking stitch. I don't know if I would use beige again for felting ( I'd read that whites don't felt up well, didn't know about light colours. ) The dark brown started felting almost immediately, but the beige took ages. I finally lost patience with it and was really rough with it in the kitchen sink with hot soapy water. That seemed to do the trick, although it could probably do with another washing session as it's still a little floppy.

From Jess: Have finally finished my FMB!

From Jaynierose: I am knitting the sophie bag, in double stranded black cosy wool on 7 mm circs. I cast on fri. ( after an emergency consultation re needles at friday's box hill meet) Knitted the base fri night and made dh stay up very late helping me count around to place stitch markers correctly. Had to work all day sat & sun pm so didn't have as much time to knit as i would have liked, but still have a respectable 15 rows done after picking up all stitches( which i hadn't done before either, but was pretty easy) Home alone today so am hoping to knit A LOT! Really enjoying the process, have finally got circs and now love them yay. lovely to see so much colour in all the bags, thought mine might look a bit dull being all black but i love it! Am going to brighten it up at the end take care all, happy knitting jaynierose.

From Kat: Week 3 progress report: knitting the bag body was a lot quicker than the base. I made it about an inch longer than the pattern and added some stripes around the bottom half. Just have to finish the handles which are very quick and easy to do - then it's on to the fun part! This is my first felted project to I am really excited to find out what the finished product will look like.

From Diana: I have made some good progress since my last "report" with the completion of the base and a bit over half of the sides. Made the transition to circulars, and had to go an buy another longer pair before I even finished the base! I'm now working on 6mm 120cm long addis. Progress has been a bit slow due to hectic schedule with work and a quick trip up to sydney, but as been assisted in the last few days by getting sick (I am marooned at home on the sofa with my knitting, unable to speak in more than a whisper).

I am now into the feature colour which is much more entertaining than knitting a plain colour. I have a lurking fear that the two yarns will felt at different slighly rates, as they do feel like slightly different thicknesses (my sample was only of the red colour), but I figure it will only be slight and a decent amount of stretching and blocking will pull it into shape. Anyway- my fears aren't strong enough to stop and felt a sample, or to rip it out. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it looks once felted!!

(with thanks to boyfriend with digital camera who kindly permits me to indulge in my obsession for knitting!)

From Jen: As you can see I cut it up and stuck some felt flowers on and ended up with this. Thank you all and good night!

From Jen: Felting, ah, the romance of turning loose, fragile crochet into hard durable fabric, all with only the aid of the washing machine. All my friends are doing it, why can't I?

So I signed up for the felt something knit-along, grand ideas in my head of crocheting my own made up pattern and ending up with a funky bag I'd be proud to swing around like i was off to market in gay pari'.

What I failed to remember is I hate wet proccess anything, I just don't like slopping around damp things, and the smell! oh god no! damp wool, I have a cat, therefore I have avoided the damp smell of dog since my teenage years. My lincraft cosy wool bag smelt like damp german
shepherd.

The pretty creamy white wool turned into a dirty off white and the others are just meh.

Here's a pic, pre-felting, aprefelting, and after I cut the damn thing up.

From Suzette: I couldn't resist posting this photo! This is Jasmine modelling my finished Lunch Bag Carryall. Last night I stitched on the handles, the loop and a knot, and I'm so happy with it.

I felted the bag in Mum's top loader, which positively beat the living daylights out of the bag (and the mesh lingerie bag it was in). I could have let it be at one wash cycle (12 mins) but decided to go another. So now I have a super solid bag that shrunk from 60cm in length to 32cm. I initially wanted a soft bag that would hold my knitting projects, but I think the Lunch Bag Carryall is better being a bit stiffer. Guess I'll just have to make another bag for my knitting - I think this one will be an all purpose tote. It deserves to be taken out of the house! (she says proudly :-)

Dianne's finished French Market Bag as shown at Cafe Banter at Sunday's SnB. Her blurb about it is here.

From Kat: My week 2 progress report: have finished the base - hooray no more increasing! Have also changed to the dark green wool for a bit of variety. Now it's on to the bag body - just round and round for 8 more inches! Still having fun, but can't wait until I get to the felting bit :)

From Catherine:I bought four colours of Cosy Wool for mine: chocolate, red, olive and sage green. Then I decided to add in some red Elle (also Lincraft brand) mohair to the red Cosy Wool to add textural interest.

I really wanted to make it in random stripes, but don't trust my creative self to allow this to happen truly randomly. So I devised a recipe:

Four coloured pencils (brown, red, two shades of green)
One sheet quarter-inch graph paper
One dice
Two nieces, aged 9 and 11

I then instructed Emma and Meg (nieces) to roll the dice, and colour in that many rows in each colour, keeping the colour sequence constant (brown, red, dark green, light green).

Now I have a chart to carry around with me (much more portable than a dice), and will continue this sequence up into the handles, so that they are "fraternal" handles, rather than identical. I'm about 7 inches up the side; I think I'll try to make the bag a little deeper than the pattern suggests. I did the base on 5 x 5mm dpns, but I'm now on a circular needle.

This is so much fun, especially as these colours are not what I would usually choose for myself. Now that I'm into it, the scheme is making me think of an apple tree : )

From Catherine: Initial preparation ingredients...

From Catherine: The random stripes courtesy of two neices.

From Jess: After doing a few scarves I wanted to do a cardi - but maybe that's a little too ambitious! For now, The French Market Bag is perfect. I went into Lincraft to pick out my two colours: my base and handles will be brown and the body will be beige.

From Suzette: Day ten and I've just about finished. I will knit about five centimetres more in length and then cast off.

I paused mid bag to knit the two handles and two i-cords, so I could conceivably knit until I run out of wool, but, like Judy, I'm getting a bit sick of going round and round and round. I added in a few stripes because I was getting bored with so much red and that helped alleviate the boredom for about 20 minutes! I must admit that I'm a bit worried about the felting process - the bag is huuuge. I'm planning to tackle the felting on Saturday so I can take the finished bag to SnB at Cafe Banter on Sunday, and, hopefully, proudly show it off!

From Judy: A quick update on my French Market Bag:

I decided in the end to knit it with one strand of Cosy Wool on 4.5mm needles, and make it a bit bigger than the pattern stated. I also decided to knit the base as a rectangle rather than fiddling around with dpns - the pattern makes it sound as though you ought to use dpns for the good of your soul, and i knit enough socks on dpns to make that unnecessary!! So I
knitted a rectangle (a bit bigger than the pattern, both in stitches cast on and in length) and then picked up around the other three sides - a technique I had not used before but found to be easy and effective. As I had enlarged the base I obviously picked up more stitches than in the pattern - at the bottom end, I picked up one stitch per cast on stitch, and on the sides I picked up approximately three stitches for every four rows. This gave a
nice even pickup. I haven't kept a record of the exact number of stitches and I am basically winging it, doing what looks good at the time (and keeping in mind the change that will occur when it is felted).

I am about two inches up the sides of the bag now. The pattern is for eight inches before doing the handles. I have three and a bit balls of the six balls of the Cosy Wool I bought, and I am going to knit until I have one full ball left - I am hoping this will be more than eight inches, but if not, so be it. Then I will have to sit down with pen and paper and work out pleasingly symmetical handles based on the number of stitches I actually have - I am aiming for similar proportions to the pattern but will need extra stitches.

When it is finished and felted I am intending to line it (though I haven't chosen the lining fabric yet) and probably do some crochet and bead embellishment. I have spun two small skeins of yarn in shades of purple, blue, pink and green that will look nice with the dark purple, and plied one skein with silver machine emroidery thread and the other with multicoloured machine embroidery thread in shades of red, blue and purple. I intend to
use these, and beads from my stash.

I am finding it a bit boring to knit, just going round and round and round, but it's good TV knitting and I also knitted some of it on the train yesterday when taking my son out. We are going away for a long weekend tomorrow and I am packing it for car and motel knitting, too.

One final note - I casually announced that I wouldn't be doing a swatch as I had already done a hat in Cosy Wool and was very satisfied with how it swatched. Well, the other day our washing machine died a final death and has been replaced with a whizz-bang model that does everything except put the clothes away afterwards. It is still a top-loader, however. I will be interested to see how the bag felts in this new machine! It has a wide variety of wash cycles and I am hoping that it will have the perfect felting cycle (I think it does!). But it does make the felting more of a mystery than it was meant to be!!

Kate has motored along with Sophie. Here is the pre-felted bag.

And here is the fully felted finished product from Kate!

From Diana: Progress up to 4th July includes felting the sample swatch (twice) and getting started on the base.

The sample got its first taste of being felted when I threw it in the wash with a load of darks. It did felt, but the stitches were still fairly well defined and the fabric still had some stretch in it. I decided (after seeing Suzette's sample at GJ's) to give it another working over by hand and am really pleased with the results. It's produced a nice firm thick fabric, and interestingly the additional felting has reduced the width but hasn't made any change to the height after the first felting. Which is good - I am planning to knit the bag a bit taller than the pattern instructions.

The base is starting to take shape - I found the dpn's a bit of a fiddle but have now got into the swing. Am finding I need to pay some attention to what I am doing though, so that I increase for the full round (and not for more than a round).

Haven't decided exactly how to work in the contrast colour yet, so lots of fun still to come. Feel like I am miles behind others, but I've just got too much on to spend more time knitting!

Diana's swatch post felting - twice. First by machine, then by hand.

From Kate: I am knitting the "Sophie" felted bag(http://www.magknits.com/warm04/patterns/sophie.htm) using 2 strands of Lincraft's Cosy wool and 5mm Circular needles. I am a bit late starting but a lazy sunday afternoon has helped me catch up. This is my first attempt at felting and using circular needles. I am using 60 cm Circulars as that seemed like heaps of length, but think the 80cm might have been a better option.

From Kat: My week 1 progress report: have got about half of the base knitted. I started on double-pointed needles, and because I only have a set of 4 it was pretty tricky - have just moved on to circulars. Just 18 more rows until all the increasing is over!

From Suzette: I have now knitted 35cm of bag; the pattern calls for 56cm of height, so I have another 20cm or so of going round and round and round... I'm still enjoying it, but I think I'll move on to the handles now just for a change of scenery. This much has taken one 200gram ball of wool.

From Dianne: (Who's already finished the FMB!) I used 4.5mm needles and single strand Cosy Wool. I did the base by the double-pointed needle option, and a huge pain in the butt it was, too. Way fiddly. The next time I'll use the other method where you pick up stitches around the edge of a pre-knitted square. In terms of following the pattern, I did with the base, but I made the body of the bag about 3 inches longer than suggested. Also, with the handles I added an extra 4 rows to each handle(half) before grafting. The pattern was dark purple with a pink/red/pink stripe in the middle, and an alternate pink/red square pattern at the edge, and purple handles. It looks like an Iced Vo Vo!!! It took 1 1/2 cycles on hot in my top loader, and felted down about 1/3 in size. It's perfect!!!!!

From Jacqueline: The pattern is the Mary-Jane Felted Slippers from Fiber Trends. I am making it in Bendigo Mohair/Wool 12ply, using a 6.5mm 60cm circular needle and those cute little apple buttons, which, incidentally, are about as old as I am. My mother was a seamstress and throws no buttons away.

If I get time, I plan on making a felted bag later on. But I will have to see - I tend to suffer from planning too many projects and stocking the yarn syndrome...but not having enough time to knit them.