Itsy Bitsy bag

When I get on one of my "I want this project DONE NOW" kicks, I go a bit nuts.



Sunday night after getting home from work, I ripped out one entire side of this and redid it. Monday night, I seamed it and made the little knitted rose (which is not only cute, but also hides the ink stain very well). Done. Just had to wait for Mr. Sun to come out so I could grab a couple of pictures. I can be a scary-fast knitter when I feel like it.



The only major change that I made was adjusting a little bit for the yarn thickness that I used. The pattern calls for a kitchen cotton in the bulky range; I used fingering weight hemp. Thanks to the stretchy mesh pattern, I didn't have to do much to accommodate the very different yarn. I cast on 69 stitches instead of the 51 that are called for, and I went down to a size 7 needle. There's also a pattern error as far as the placement of the short rows; following it as written will give you a short row on one side (right) and a short row on the bottom (wrong). Luckily, when I cast on for the stitches for the strap, I had put in a stitch marker to mark the first stitch of the cast on; I just had to shift the short row to that marker. Easy fix.



Look how well it holds a 100g skein of sock yarn! When you see a name like "Itsy Bitsy", you picture one of those tiny bags that you can fit a box of Tic Tacs in and nothing else. I'm glad this came out to be a good size.

All the problems that I had (minus the easy-to-fix short row error) were my own. This pattern was a lot of fun, with 3 different main stitch patterns that kept it from being boring. You can see the mesh pattern well in the other pictures... there's also a basketweave and a herringbone:





Incidentally, folks who were at ABC last night, I heard "Cold As Ice" on the radio on the way home... terribly fitting, no? I hope everyone's core temperatures are back to normal. ;)