Friday, September 21, 2007

Two more bags - top down

I came down with my annual fall cold the end of last week. Unfortunately it affected my thought processes as I started the handles for my new bag. I wanted to try to work a bag from handles down. I'm sure I thought hard about it - 2 handles with 12 loops in each handle should equal 24 loops around the bag - right?



I did not notice my mistake until I had both handles done and connected, and had done 3 rounds.


It suddenly dawned on me that I was going around on more than 24 loops.







I blame it on my cold. What I had was 2 handles with 12 loops (on each end of the handle) equal to 48 loops. What I had wanted was 6 loops on each handle.



Oh, well, I didn't want to waste the time I had already put into the bag (not to mention the time I would take to undo all the knots and make the bag the way I thought I was), so I just figured I'd make a large string bag.


It is nice and roomy. I decided though that 12 loops for handles is too many. It is hard to find the handles from the rest of the bag.


Since I had 48 loops instead of the 24 I had wanted, I decreased the number of loops to 24 in the next to last round.






For the final round I used a hard plastic ring as the mesh stick. I wrapped the string through the loop, then net 1 knot in the next loop and repeated the process around all 24 loops. This formed a grommet at the bottom of the bag.








I decided to try again for a 24 loop bag. This time I got the numbers of the handles correct -- 2 handles, 6 loops at each end of the handle equals 24 loops.














I tried to do a grommet without the plastic ring, but that did not work. So I decided to join the loops in the final round to each other without using a mesh stick. This actually formed two corners at the bottom of the bag. If you look carefully you can see the two points where the corners form.

3 comments:

Alwen said...

Oops. The latest round (hexagon)-bottom bag I made, for some reason in my first increase round I skipped one increase. I couldn't stand it & picked out the knots.

I see you are on that Pineapple Knot forum too! I just joined, um, 5 days ago. All us knot makers in one place. :)

Knotty Bear said...

Nice work Rita,

Like your new bag, shame about the cold though.

Keep it up.
Take care,
Barry ;-)

Jill said...

I just made a bag using your example...I made the handles out of a mint green size 3 crochet cotton, and the body out of white size 3 cotton...very pretty, and very easy to find the handles this way! :)