Horizon Twist Felted Purse

Earlier this year I plied some Horizon Merino with some White Merino, to come up with this yarn. I then washed it and instead of hanging it to dry, I put it into the washing machine on the spin cycle to spin out the remainder of the water. When I took it out later to rewrap the yarn into a skein it was sort of felted together in places. So when I was separating the yarn it broke into several small skeins and a couple of nice size skeins. I knew right then that this yarn would be knitted into a felted purse one day.

Well, yesterday I pulled this yarn off the shelf in my spinning room, and found my size 10 1/2 circular knitting needles and began knitting away on this scarf. I knew that I didn't have a lot of yarn to make a very deep felted purse and I had only just designed a pattern for a different felted purse (Blue & White Felted Purse). I just started following this pattern until I got to the area where I'd begin decreasing for the handles. Once I had decreased for the handles on both sides of the purses I knited only 5 rows instead of 10 rows, as I wanted to make sure I'd have enough yarn to finished the purse. Then I cast back on the stitches that I had decreased to make the handles. I then knited 2 more rows and then bound off, washed the bag in hot soapy water in my washing machine. When it was done washing, I took it out to look at it and found it wasn't felted as much as I wanted, so I rewashed it and it was fine after that. Then I put the purse over some boxes, to get the shape I wanted.

This purse or bag is nice and roomy to hold, things like knitting needles, yarn, measuring tape, and stitch markers. I'm sure that even a small pair of scissors and a cell phone would fit.