Help yourself. And do resize, chop down etc. or make your own if you think this one is too aggressive.

And now to the bag. The bag has been a joyous project, taking very little time and being extremely pleasing with its lovely, fat cables.

In this shot you can also see the fimo buttons I made to match with the yarn. They are very simple, but I didn’t want anything crazy on this one.

The pattern is this one from Garnstudio; you’ll note if you click the link how I shamelessly plagiarized their bag-hanging-from-iron-railings composition for this next photo of the lovely FO.

I did go a bit nuts fortifying this bag also; in the pattern the idea is to just knit a few rows of garter stitch at the top. But knowing the abuse that I give my bag (trawling bits of furniture around inside etc.) I decided mine would need both lining and doubling-up on top. So I did some casting on and casting off to make button holes and two large holes for the straps to be sewn into, then I lined the bag with this fabric which I had in my sewing basket from many months ago, which cost me 25p in a charity shop and is some kind of miscellaneous offcut.

I then sewed the straps into the holes I had made in the bag cuff earlier:

And then I folded my doubled-up cuff back over itself, sandwiching the top of the lining fabric between two layers of bag cuff. To do this I had to do two sets of button holes, so that when I folded everything over again, there would still be holes for the buttons:

Once everything was thus assembled, I joined up the bottom seam using mattress stitch, baked some FIMO buttons, affixed them to the back of the bag, sewed around the doubled-up button-holes so they would be nice and tidy, buttoned up the bag and went for a stroll in Reading with the lovely Lara.

I never blocked this item but I’m delighted with how it has turned out, and especially with my structural fortifications.