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Thursday, August 22, 2013

Small bags in Murano wool for felting

In the weeks before going to Kangaroo Island, I thought I would have another go at knitting a bag from Murano wool, this time trying a small bag and using shade 022. I chose Ronaldsay Beach from Alison Underwood & Sue Parker's Felted Bags. The challenge and interest with this bag is a frilled top.

It knitted up quite quickly and easily.

I had my eye out for any emergency of the lean-to-the-right-hand-of the-knitter syndrome that had plagued my large Murano bag. I wondered if this was only a symptom of large projects and thought it worth giving it a try - I had bought 4 balls of this wool to play with.

Sure enough, after about 20 rows, the lean appeared. I think I can now conclude this is a problem with the wool.

I have been unable to any reference to this online but it is very hard to search for -'twist' 'lean', 'skew' and similar terms all bring up a range of standard knitting techniques.



This bag takes 100gms of wool - half the ball I have, so I decided to finish this one knitting as normal, then knit another one into the back of the stitch to see if that solves the problem.  Hopefully felting will remove the distortion.


The bag has two rows of bobbles around the top, just below the frill. I enjoyed finishing the bag in this way. The pattern is very easy, so I can keep it in my head. It's a good project to carry around, as the ball goes inside the bag!


 This time I determined where the handles went by using my eye, rather than counting rows from the marked corners - the problem I got into with the larger bag, as the distortion in the direction of the knitting leads to misalignment.











Here's the second bag - knitted using same wool, same pattern, but knitting into the back of the stitch. Perfectly straight! Many thanks to Katherine who suggested the remedy!

I am enjoying this pattern, so decided to make one bag before I started felting.

7 comments:

Monica said...

Wow, great success you had with Katherine's technique! I know I will have the same problem with knitting in the round. I have actually redesigned my next project for back and forth knitting to avoid it!

I am interested to see how it felts!

margaret said...

these baggs look like a bit of fun, can`t wait to see them felted

Katherine said...

Those bags are knitting up well. Look forward to seeing the new one felted. Glad the tip worked and I have also noticed when playing around with some over-plyed ie energised lol handspun that it works a treat for that too. So I think we can safely say the Murano, which I don't think they sell anymore although it was in the clearance area of the mill shop, is over spun.

Jillian said...

Thanks Katherine. I'm pretty happy with the result, thanks to you. Th full Murano range is still available on the BWM website. It doesn't appear to be either overspun or overplied, but that doesn't mean it isn't. More soon.

Jillian said...

Yes, it worked a treat - thanks to blogging friends. I could experiment with straight needles to see if the problem surfaces with them as well

Jillian said...

I like them a lot, Margaret, but I'm a bag lady from way back! Felting soon.

JennyPennyPoppy said...

Your knitted bags look great especially with the added bobbles. Looking forward to seeing them felted :)