Sunday, June 8, 2014

Crochet Market Bag - Fresh off the CharmaCrafts Hook

Long time, no posts. I know! Life, it's been crazy, you know? Never to busy to crochet though, it's my therapy. That and some nice cold iced coffee. 

A couple of months ago, a bestie posted a link on Facebook for a cute crochet market bag. I'd forgotten all about it, and we were texting and I asked her "I need a new crochet project, the afghan I'm working on is getting boring". She said "remember that bag?". Ding! I had a project.



 
I went to work on the pattern she posted, but it was written for cotton worsted yarn, none of which I had on hand. Off to Pinterest and a quick search later I find this pattern by Bobbles and Baubles written for worsted weight and it didn't specify cotton or acrylic, so I chose to try it with a giant ball of grey I had in my stash.  


It is a super quick and easy pattern to follow. Only took a couple of hours to complete, my only issue was I apparently can't count rows because of my negligent use of a stitch marker. By the time I added a second color I realized I was 2 rows short. I put a 3rd row of color at the top when the pattern only called for 2. The bag is a row short and in the grand scheme of things I don't think anyone will notice. Will they?






For my flower, I used a pattern from a blog called Oodles 4 Noodles, the blog appears to be down at the moment but I managed to save a screen shot of the flower pattern. It makes fluffy flower in the round without having to sew it together after.


I did find the bag a touch on the small side for a market bag, it does make a great wine bag if you are ever in the need to carry 4 bottles of wine anywhere. Who me? So, using the Bobbles and Baubles pattern, I increased the base one more row (to 60 stitches), and this purple bag has a nice finished size of 14" x 14" (maybe 6-8 wine bottles? hehe) and I still did 3 rows of the contrast color at the top vs 2.  I think this size is a bit more versatile!