Market Tote (again...)

Okay, so I made yet another tote bag attempt. This time, I followed the advice of "naturallyknitty" on Ravelry to knit in the round. She suggested Judy's Magic Cast-On, which I tried for the first time and totally fell in love with!!! I will use it on all my toe-up socks from now on. It's so much easier and tidier than what I have been doing.

Since one of the things I didn't like about my two prior attempts was the sloppy sides, knitting in the round with no seams on the sides or the bottom should take care of this problem. One of the things I read, though, about knitting this bag in the round, is to make sure the top opening is large enough.


By the way, I also changed needle size and am now knitting the tote with size US 7. I am using my beloved Knit Picks Harmony needles. Since I only had one skein of the lime green yarn, I had to switch to blue when I ran out of green. I tried to make a nice transition.


As you can see in the picture, the lime green is about 7 inches long, then I did a set of pattern (i.e., 4 rows) of blue, then another set of green, and back to blue for good. I had a little bit of green left. By the way, the Cotlin blue is called "Nightfall." At around 11 inches, I divided the stitches in half and worked the two sides separately, so the opening of the tote would be a little wider. I made the two sides about an inch or a bit more. Then cast them off.

And my next challenge started. What is an I-cord???? Or an applied I-cord? I had no idea. I read the instructions, played around a little, went online for more instructions, and more instructions, found this nifty little tutorial, and finally found this online tutorial for I-cord (scroll down). I later found another tutorial on YouTube, I think I would have liked better. I will try that next time.

I started the I-cord over several times and am still not quite happy with the end result. But I wanted to finish, so I let the sloppiness slide this time around. So, I used the applied I-cord along the two cast-offs and then the regular I-cord for the actual handles. Since I had a little bit of the lime green yarn left over, I used that for the applied I-cord, which probably added to the sloppy appearance, since the lime green stands out a little more. Oh well, you live and learn. I definitely want to make this bag again, and I will do better next time. So, here is the finished product:



I was also a bit messy in joining the ends of the handles with the beginning of the applied I-cords. I wanted to make sure I have a sturdy connection and in the process probably overdid it a little.

Overall, though, I like how the tote came out. Here is my husband sporting it:




He said the handles could have been a bit longer. I was afraid to make them too long, because I didn't know how much everything was going to stretch out once the tote is in use. I will have to see about that. If it doesn't "grow" too much, I might make the next tote a little bigger.

Another "FO" (finished object)! Yeah for me!!