Felted No Sew Zipper Bags

Following the 3rd installment of TECHKnitter's A little felted purse KAL (part 1, part 2) I attempted to hand felt the bags. Now I can't figure out if that was yesterday or the day before - it was the day before, or rather the night before. They were drying all day today (well technically it's been tomorrow for almost 2 hours already, but since I haven't slept it's still "today.")

I've never been keen on rubber dishwashing gloves, but the ones I could borrow were about a size too big. I don't know if this added any potential extra friction, I did notice it especially annoyed me around my thumb. Or maybe it's just the shape of the gloves. They fit better with your thumb bent across the palm, as if grasping a plate. Since I was using them with flat hands that made them feel gappy and weird.  Oh, well!

I think in places I overfelted and other places underfelted. I tried to draw as much extra water out of the bags by rolling them in towels. I'd left the bags on their side for several hours earlier today under a ceiling fan so the bottoms could get dry more quickly. There is still dampness under the little pockets that were made by folding and tacking the bottom.






Isn't the little bag cute?

It's about 4" wide at the base and about 5" wide in the middle and at the top trim.  This bag is 3.5" high and 2.75" deep across short direction of the base.

Bottoms up! I wasn't sure just how the shaping on the bottom was supposed to go, but this seemed reasonable to me. I probably should have felted the bottom a little more so the seam would disappear.

This is the big one, of course. At first I'd stuffed it with plastic bags and left the sides straight. Early this morning I decided one of the really appealing things about the bag pattern model was the rounded sides. So I stuffed in a few more bags and readjusted everything. Too bad my hands are concealing that detail. I would have liked for it to have the same curve as the small bag. But this is my compromise for now.

At least the shape is easier to see in this photo. Perhaps the pattern in cognac heather and plum heather, too (the upper stranded pattern). I used the chart from Latvian Fingerless Mitts by Veronik Avery in Knitting Classic Style: 35 Modern Designs Inspired by Fashion's Archives. Except I started the top intarsia band at the bottom of its portion which makes it upside down since the bag was knit from the top down. The lower, more eye-catching band is the same right side up and upside down.


I really feel like if I'd been planning rather than making it up as I went along I would have positioned the dramatic colored band higher, or near the top. And I probably would have chosen less similar colors for the subdued pattern band to make it stand out more. I don't know why I still have such a weakness for pairing cognac heather with plum heather. The order makes more sense if I'd worked all of the body of the bag in reverse, starting with the jade that's on the bottom and ending with cognac heather, the solid band near the top. Just noticed how terribly difficult it is to see the top trim. I think the color is called dark teal heather. It's a nice dark green. Bag measures 5.5" across the long side of the base, 4.75" in the shorter direction and 6" across where it zips closed. Width is about 6.5" and it's about 6" high including the top edge of the green trim.

Sure looks like it's just about to roll off and never be found!

This was supposed to be attached to a zipper pull for the smaller bag, but some time after taking the second pic it must have fallen out of my hand and I haven't found it yet.

Seasonal Clauses

That would be Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, of course.

I appreciate that the pattern gives her dimensional bangs. The first time I made her hair it was a bright white. The when I got to Santa's hair and beard, it called for furry yarn. What I could easily put my hands on was slightly off white. I didn't think about that making a difference until I had them side by side the next day and her hair made his look dingy. Actually, the pattern calls for making her hair gray. At first I couldn't find my dk grays. And then even after I did I just wasn't so keen on giving her gray hair. So I looked through the dk yarn again and found this off white color that didn't clash so badly with Santa's hair.

I did have a hard time figuring out how to apply Santa's hair and just how his mustache was to be completed, but managed something.

I think what is shown here is partly due to shifted position or the angle of the camera. I have her hair pinned on with a single U shaped blocking pin in the front. When I first made her hair in blinding white the back of the hair seemed impossibly short. Here you can see it sort of tapers down to about ear lobe level, which is realistic. In the original hair I added several extra rows to make her hair extend down as far as i thought it should be. In the second hair (pictured) it may just need a slight adjustment in positioning. I've left the yarn uncut, though, because I haven't completely made up my mind about whether or not the hair is finished.

I

Here's Mrs. Claus's hat, which seemed awfully slow to work, but it was easy and very clever for generating all those ruffles.

Together again. I realized typing just a bit ago that I didn't have any snapshots of Santa's hat yet. It's only partly completed, but starts from the round white ball at the bottom tip. This pattern is easy to follow with the increases and decreases and it clearly pays very special attention to construction and shaping. For instance, the ball which anyone else would have made a pompom - it's crocheted!

When I finish up the clothes for this pair it's going to be no more crochet with boucle for me!

If only I knew...

If I knew my camera was going to die I would have uploaded my pictures earlier. I'm really not sure completely what happened, but I connected the USB cable to the computer and the computer couldn't see the camera. Well, I first noticed the photo program didn't see the camera, then I noticed the computer didn't. I went to the help menu and followed the suggestion to check that the cable was plugged in properly. All along I'd been ignoring a red flashing battery symbol in the upper left corner. Felt a bit puzzled about that because I had just swapped the batteries a few hours earlier and recharged the dead set. Just took a few pictures, so the batteries should not have been dead.

Back to the cables. I plugged one end into a different USB port on the computer and nothing else happened. Finally I looked at the tiny end of the cable connected to my camera. It seemed to be leaning downward, as if only partly connected. I pushed it in securely and it didn't feel right. I removed the end and saw that the port for that was half misaligned with the opening on the camera. When I tried to attach the cable again, hoping to kind of snag and pull it back in place it totally disappeared into the camera. Seems like I should hear something rolling around in there, but there isn't. Weird. At some point in turning off and on and switching to the view mode the battery symbol went back to all green and charged. Again, no idea why. Probably was before the USB connection broke off and vanished.

So, can't show any pics of the bigger little felted purse that I mostly bungled. Actually I took about 3 pics of that just before frogging it. Had goofed it in several ways: picked up too many sts, increased kfb too many times, and most prominently didn't use the matching zipper I bought to go with the yarn. I thought I'd only bought one dark green zipper to use with either of 2 dark green yarns, but actually had found two zippers, one that favored each yarn. When started the project I didn't realize I was using the less matchy zipper. But as I worked most of the top and nearly finished binding off it just seemed to stand out more and more.

What I had just taken a few snapshots of was version 2 of the bigger little felted purse. Both zippers are about 6.5" total and 5.5" zipper opening. I really like the size and proportions of the bag as the pattern is written, but I suddenly thought I'd like to make the next one wide enough to actually stick my whole hand in. I plan to just scale up all the dimensions. So on v2, the zipper is knit in and the top is completed and bound off. I'm picking up stitches around the bottom to work the body of the bag. For this one I thought ahead and measured out about 120" of yarn before I began attaching the zipper. I tied it up in a butterfly and then when I got to the picking up part around the sts knit through the zipper I folded the excess beginning length in half and then started using that with the crochet hook to pick up those stitches. It was near the end of the failed bigger version that I realized I'd avoid adding tails to weave in if I left a long enough tail at the beginning.

Earlier in the year we got rid of the printer that had been unreliable. It had memory card slots, including one for my dinosaur memory card. The new printer has slots, but not one as ancient as I need. There's probably 8 photos or less on the computer. I suppose the bigger disappointment is that I didn't take the opportunity to get a picture of Mrs. Claus with her hat. Mr.'s isn't finished yet, but hers is and it looks great. Oh well.

I really really dread having to figure out what camera features to look for in a replacement.  Too much stress! Maybe Walgreens can move my photos from the card to CD until I work through a better solution.

More progress - No sew zipper KAL bag

This is my progress so far on A little felted purse KAL.

Past my bedtime, but I'm kind of excited about the pictures, so I'll share those at least.

 Working the 3 needle bind off, but using one hand to hold the camera ;o). Turned half inside out, this is the best color representation of them all.

You can see my KoalaCaddie there too. Been meaning for a long time to do a lot of typing about how wonderful it is and how much I love it. Isn't it pretty?!

ETA: just realized I goofed following instructions. Think I was supposed to only have 15 rows after the color change for a total of 19. I worked 19 in the bottom color, though. oh well!

3 Needle bind off done.

Right side up

Up side down

See why I need to adjust the
tension in the superwash
pick up row?

Thanks, TECHKnitter!

Taking a different view

The next thing that occurred to me for troubleshooting was to go sit at another computer and see just what it looked like from there.  In a matter of minutes I've seen the works in progress shows appear absolutely correct with photos displayed as expected, blurs of photos that don't display completely and fade immediately, and also plain white where the photos should be.  And this was with all no intervention at all from me other than viewing, clicking somewhere else and then returning to look again.

This feels far too much like having my brother and sister simultaneously trying to teach me to drive a stick-shift.  And by that I mean all of us in the car at the same time.  They're both younger, but have a tendency to gang up on me, always have.  That's a particularly vivid memory of unresolved confusion.  They both tell me what to do, they correct me and the result is sometimes the car moves forward and sometimes it dies.  The whole process is mysterious; I can't tell what was different at all between the times it worked and the times it failed.  At least here I have a more powerful reassurance that it's not me.  Since no changes were attempted and the result varied based on nothing more than a few more seconds time passing, I'm in an area outside of the sphere of cause and effect.  Feels a bit too familiar, in a very infuriating sort of way.  Random can be very uncomfortable.  Randomness is not usually my friend.

Photos still blank

Or are they?
At times there really is nothing to say besides the obvious.  Hopefully that statement soon won't make sense because this blip will have been resolved.  The whole episode will be no more than a vaguely recalled speed bump in a bigger adventure.

I've done everything I can think of and the works in progress show is still a blank white space where the photos go.  I guess it's just going to be malfunctioning until I can figure it out or just give up and delete it.  In the meantime I'll keep rearranging and poking around at it and trying to get answers and results.

Hmmmmm.  Just as I clicked preview the window displayed with both the new and old (code should match, though) WIP slideshows along with both FO shows that are currently there.  However, as I saw at times last night the timing of the WIP versions is off.  If it isn't completely blank, it's doing what I just saw: flashing a blur, just a brief fuzzy gray rectangle that never materializes into an image and fades out as soon as it appears.  So maybe the issue is timing???

Added above paragraph and clicked preview and now I see 2 working shows each of FOs and WIPs.  I know it isn't me, lol.  I guess I'm just going to have to live with this for a while...  Fortunately, since I'm pretty much the only one here, the oddness of it will likely go unnoticed.

Just for fun, I'm seriously considering how to go about changing the size of those items anyway.  Surely it's not the time to do anything extra when just the basics aren't 100%, but why would I leave well enough alone?  I've been sucked into the underlying gobbledegook of the working parts.  That's a clear invitation for tinkering!  I've always been the kind of person who knows just enough to be really dangerous that way.  I can embrace this aspect, especially when I'm being provoked by items changing and functioning by their own whims.  That's how I've managed to get a lot of skill and understanding in a range of areas.  I'm not the least bit afraid of replacing sinks, faucets, light fixtures, and even had the old washing machine and dryer set in pieces and then working again several times.  I am fearless this way.  I will prevail.

Doesn't everything taste better with dog hair?

I can't vouch for that.  But I remember seeing something, perhaps a mug, suggesting everything tastes better with cat hair.  I don't know because I don't have a cat.  I have a dog.  If I've been tasting her hair I haven't really noticed.  I suppose that means dog hair can be tasteless.  Mostly I've been unintentionally wearing her hair.  The light strands really accentuate my mostly dark and jewel-tone wardrobe.  At times I'll feel a sharp prick on my foot and find one of her hairs actually poking into my skin.  Not stuck against my skin, but a piece I have to grab, sometimes only catching it with tweezers, and yank out.  Who knew that hair could beat skin?

I just finished winding up a center-pull ball from one of the four skeins of String Theory Merino DK that arrived today.  Took a few snapshots, uploaded them to the computer and updated my Rav stash.  When I saw the photos on screen I noticed there was a strand of dog hair prominently on the top of the ball.  It appears in each of the photos just to the right of the plastic center piece.  I'm not sure how it found the opportunity to get there.  I had the winder in my hand and didn't set it anywhere except to prop it against the box part of my swift while I grabbed my camera.  That's not a lot of room for mischief, but I suppose dog hair finds the easiest and fastest path to stick to something everything.

I can be sure most things don't look better with dog hair.  Equally certain that nearly everything I own has dog hair on it somewhere.  There's just no stopping it.