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!!