FO - Everlasting Bag II

My friend Tawah bought this fun green cotton yarn a while back, but she was having a heck of a time trying to make it into a bag. She told me that she tried several patterns and none of them were working out correctly. She asked if she could send me the yarn so that I could take a stab at it. Naturally, I thought that sounded like a fine plan. So, she sent me the yarn and I decided that I would make a modified Everlasting Bagstopper. The yarn is DK weight though, so I couldn't use the numbers from the pattern, even if I had wanted to. But, I do love the construction of the bag, so that's what I went with.

I cast on for this bag and went to work. Everything I tried seemed to go wrong. The bag was either too loose, too tight, too big, too ugly, or some combination of these. It was a bit of a nightmare really. The problem? Tawah only had 1 skein of this yarn for me to use. That meant, it had to be just right or I would run out of yarn. I ripped the bag out at least 4 times that I can count because of the yardage issue. I tried at least 3 needle sizes, trying to get a good looking product. Finally, after several months of playing around, I figured it out.

I used size 7s for the bottom and then 10.5s for the body. I did decreases in the stockinette portion of the bag before starting the pattern. After much debate, I went with a simple stitch pattern because it worked. I also worked a few decreases at the top in the seed stitch portion of the bag. I wanted it to be just a little tighter at the top because it is likely to stretch with use. After all was said and done, I really liked the finished object. It's useful and that really is what matters for me. I met Tawah in Indiana just before Easter and gave it to her. She seemed to love it! Hooray! We loaded it up with snacks for her car trip and it worked beautifully. Next time she wants me to make a bag for her though, she's going to have to send me more yarn! That's all there is to it. :)

In case you are curious, that's a laptop inside the bag. I wanted to try and show how big the bag could actually become. :) You can see the fun pooling effect of the yarn in this picture. I'm not sure why, but it is much more apparent in the pictures than in person. Go figure!