you can see the herringbone pattern, right?

Alas, I have completed what I thought would be a pretty basic purse, knit in a herringbone pattern. The pattern came from the book: Knitting Little Luxuries, a Louisa Harding book. Unable to find her yarn that is called for in the pattern, I found a remarkably similar colorway yarn from Plymouth Yarn called Shire Silk. While mostly a straw yellow color, it has flecks of orange, white and the occasional green, which gives this bag the "embroidered straw bag" look of the 50s.

So all the while I am knitting this bag, for some reason (like being neurotic,) I am not trusting that the herringbone pattern is being translated. I kept asking anyone who would listen: "you can see the herringbone pattern, right?" After approximately a dozen affirmative answers, I let it go.

Having finished the knitting was really only half the battle. I now had to embroider all those little flowers on. Guess I forgot about that when I got so excited to make the purse. Here, ladies, I will recommend cheating a little. If you look closely in the picture above, you will notice little red knit flowers with the yellow centers. I purchased those at a fabric store years ago (M and J Trimmings in NYC), and just sewed them on quickly. The same goes for the silk looking peach colored rosettes. The remaining flowers, I hand-embroidered as lazy daisies with embroidery thread. Yikes. The pattern recommends using skinny ribbon, but my fabric store did not have a very good selection of colors so I went with the embroidery thread.

The next step involved something new for me: fusible interfacing. It's basically just a thick, iron on fabric that makes the purse less loose and knit-like, and makes it more solid, stronger. I just cut it to shape and ironed it right on. Very simple, but it involved a few nervous texts to a girlfriend to confirm that was I was about to do wasn't going to ruin a week's worth of knitting and a weekend of tiresome embroidery.

Now the kicker. Lining the purse with fabric. A seamstress, I am not. Yes, I own a sewing machine. And on good days, I can even wind a bobbin and thread the thing. But beyond that, I am a little helpless. Thankfully, the purse fit under the foot and I was able to sew a straight line up and down with little trouble. I even got so confident as to put a little pocket on the inside. I've had it in my mind that I will be swinging this little straw bag with me up and down the streets of Paris in a few weeks, so I sewed a little passport pocket! (here's where you oooh and ahhh.)

It's definitely not a purse you would want to overload, as I don't think the handles could take the kind of weight I typically put in my shoulder bag/girl on the run/never know when you'll need those sneakers or tire iron in the city. But definitely can handle a small wallet, your lipstick (a girl's gotta look smart), keys, etc. I debuted my purse at girls scouts. One of the girls said: "I wish I was listening when you taught us how to knit last year." Ha!