Felted Market Bag

Before

After!

After covering all the major bases of knitting (scarves, hats, gloves, etc.) I needed a new challenge to expand my fiber horizons. I've always been intrigued by felting but had never been quite inspired to take it on myself. A trip out to Santa Barbara, California to visit my sister landed me in an adorable knitting shop called Loop & Leaf, where I was inspired by the owner's felted sample bowls that lined a shelf. I went out on a limb and bought enough yarn (or so I thought) to make a felted bag.

It's always a dilemma whether to buy the yarn first and find a pattern later, or go into the yarn shop armed with the pattern and choose yarn to suit it. I tend to buy yarn impulsively and then scour the web for the perfect pattern, which tends to work out well until I run out of yarn and frantically head for the store to hope there is a spare skein of yarn left in my color.

Anyway, in the case of the felted bag, I found a wonderful pattern on Knitty in the "French Market Bag." I used one skein of Sheep Shop Yarn Company's 100% wool yarn in powder blue (for the contrasting color) and three skeins in blue-green. The yarn knitted up beautifully although I did run out of the powder blue color but was able to improvise using extra blue-green yarn.

I'll post before and after pictures so you can see the magic of felting!