First Felting Foray

Behold! The Noro Bag, in all its pre-felted glory:





The pattern is "Misty" by Brooks Jones, available free of charge at the Magknits website.

May I just pause for a moment to extol the virtues of Noro brand yarn? The colors are amazing. I have a tiny bit of Noro left from some previous projects (namely, a Fairisle hat with earflaps and my iPod cozy) in green, yellow, and orange -- NOT Mrs. Swank's colors, btw -- but I can't bring myself to throw it out. Even though it's a tiny little ball of something like 20 yards of yarn. *sigh* I am such a Noro ho. Websites like Wool Needlework don't help, either.

Anyway, this bag was constructed from 2 skeins of Noro Kureyon # 149 (off white/lt. brown/gray colorway) and 3 skeins of # 90 (blue/green/purple/fuchsia colorway) on size 10.5 needles. I knitted it so obsessively that it took me less than a week to complete (please don't try this at home, kids). One cautionary note: although I was pretty close to gauge, I didn't have as much yarn left over as I needed to make the I-cord strap. This was all I could do (i.e., the I-cord on the right) ...



The Noro I-cord is about 30" long. Since I like a longer strap on my bags, I made another I-cord (~ 50" long) with some leftover Gjestall Naturgarn No. 1 in color #205 Mid Grey Heather. Mad props to Jules for helping me document this project.

Now I am going to toss this wool bag into a hot washing machine. Please keep your fingers crossed for me ...