WOMN

No, not another trendy alternative spelling of “woman,” WOMN stands for What’s On My Needles—this is a knitting blog, right? So I’m supposed to show pictures and talk about what I’m knitting? Here’s the latest:

Driven by my passion for Manos Caribe, I dashed through the end of the Lunch Bag




and the Stripe and Dot Scarf (about which you’ll hear more shortly, but here’s a look).



Yes, it’s going to be a felt bag.



I have a poor track record with felting—things come out too big, too small, out of proportion, or require more finishing than I’ve got stamina for—to the point where certain of my colleagues roll their eyes when I even talk about another felting project. But I do love it, and bags are pretty safe, because it doesn’t matter exactly what size they come out. This one is going to be handbag-size, I hope. Oh, what the heck, I’ll say what dimensions I’m trying to make, and we’ll all see how close I get: I’d like about 12” wide by maybe 10” high by 4” deep. It’s going to have an outside pocket and straps in a contrasting color (maybe two contrasting colors).

What you see in the picture is the bottom. The base is done in seed stitch, because I saw instructions for a felt bag with the bottom in seed stitch, and I wonder if it will be thicker and sturdier than stockinette, or different in any way from garter stitch. Then I picked up stitches all around and am proceeding in stockinette, with stitches at each corner slipped on every other round to encourage real corners rather than a bag that wants to be a cylinder.

The color, which looked like it had an alarming amount of white in the skein, is now reassuringly blue/green.

Oh, and keep an eye out for WOYN, What’s On Your Needles, the heading we’ll use when posting pictures of customers’ projects that we see in the shop, in progress or complete.