Marsupial tote.

For my second-ever blog post, I will be discussing knitting. Feel free to tune out at this point if this bores you. I have recently gotten into this lovely winter hobby and am proud of my little projects. First thing I did was knit a scarf for my husband Ben. It was the easiest thing you could make - just garter stitch, which is knitting rows back and forth over and over - but I did use an interesting variegated yarn so that it came out in shades of black, brown, and gray. Incredibly, Ben wears it constantly. I will have to put up a picture of him wearing it - rarely is he caught without it. He refers to it in a faux Scottish accent as "me scarrrrrf."

Project #2 was from the great book "Stitch 'n Bitch," and it is called Meema's Felted Marsupial Tote. This bag looked easy enough, but it turned out a little more challenging than I thought it would be. I thought I would put up my notes in case anyone out there happens to Google the pattern and wants to make it like I did, because I strayed from the book's pattern.

If you want it to look like it does in the book's picture, be warned - IT WILL BE TINY. The book's pattern makes it come out like a little handbag. I started it, saw how tiny it was coming out, and ripped it out and started over. I wanted a good-sized tote bag, so I changed the size. The other odd thing is that even though the pattern is small, they tell you to buy way too much yarn for even a much bigger bag. I only used 2 skeins of orange, and 1 skein plus about 18 yards of pink. You start out by making the bottom of the tote first, and they tell you to cast on 16 stitches and knit 44 rows. I figured I would try to make the bag about 25% bigger, so I casted on 20 stitches and knitted 54 rows. (Are "casted" and "knitted" the proper past tense? Anyway.) So then after that, you pick up stitches and start knitting in the round to make the bag. I did 32 rows in orange, and 26 rows in pink.

Another thing to watch out for is the tricky "right twist" stitch. I searched online to find better directions for it because the ones in the book didn't quite work for me. In my own words, which may work only for me: look at the next two stitches on your left needle. Knit the SECOND one, without slipping anything off the left needle, and then knit the first one. You will feel all twisted up - this is good. You will end up with your right needle positioned between the first and second stitches. Now - slip BOTH off the left needle. It feels like you're dropping a stitch, but you're not! Go ahead and count them, you're fine! Easy as that.

Here are my results. In tooling around online I noticed that most people who've done this project used different colors and yarns, but the radiant colors of this project were what drew me to it in the first place!

This is the finished product, pre-felting:


I then stuck it in the washing machine with some detergent (scary!) and let it go a full 10-minute cycle in very hot water, including spin cycle. I took it out and put a small cardboard box inside it for shaping, and let it air dry.

Final results:



Good luck with this pattern, it's fun and rewarding! I'm using the bag to carry around my knitting projects now!