Crocheted Bike Bag

This weekend I got a new bicycle. It's the kind for just riding on the local streets and trails, but I am very happy with Bluebell.

My new bike and non-matching water bottle

It weighs a LOT more than my road bike did, though it claims to be aluminum.

The first thing I noticed about it was that I have no way to carry my cell phone when I am riding it, thanks to giving away all my fancy cycling shirts a while back. I usually ride in exercise pants rather than jeans, so I have no pockets.

But I know how to crochet! So, on Sunday when my devoted spouse was planting things in the front yard, I sat down with good ole Lily Sugar and Cream yarn and crocheted myself this little bag to hold my cell phone and maybe a chap stick. I need to take the phone because I track my progress with one of those free GPS exercise apps.

Bicycle Bag with Cute Buttons

I could have just made a big rectangle, but I like the way single crochet looks in the round better than back and forth. So, I did a little trick and ended up with a no-seam crochet bag. I made the button holes vertical rather than horizontal, so that the buttons would stay better when the bag is on the bike. I think it looks fun and practical. I could have used hemp cord, but it hurts my hands. And the same bag could be made weatherproof by using strips cut from plastic shopping bags. If I shopped at Wal-Mart I could get blue ones to match the bike.

(I also knitted a good amount on the alpaca sweater. I am on the home stretch.)

How to Make a Bike Bag

If, for some reason, you are dying to make one of these, here's how:

Body of Bag

Use sturdy cotton yarn and a crochet hook that will crochet the yarn tightly. I used an F.

Chain enough to be a little longer than your phone, no more than an inch longer.

Single crochet into the second stitch from your hook and sc across. Count how many stitches you have.

Sc into the side of the last stitch.

Sc into the BOTTOM of the row you just did. Make sure you crochet the same number of stitches (it's easy to skip a few, which I did the first time).

Sc into the side of your previous turning chain, then sc across your first row.

Continue to sc in every stitch around and around that first row. After a few rows you will see a pouch shape developing.

Keep going until your bag is about an inch longer than whatever you want to put in it.

Straps

My straps are 4 stitches in from each side, and 6 stitches wide. Each row will be ch2, sc5, turn. When the strap is a good length in your estimation (long enough to go over your handlebars with some slack), make the button holes.

Do 4 rows of just three stitches. Break yarn. Start where you left off and do 4 rows of 3 stitches. Go across and connect the two thin sections to return to 6-stitch rows, and crochet a few more rows. Repeat on the other side of the bag.

Buttons

Get nice big buttons and sew them on securely. I took my bag to the fabric store to be sure I got the right size buttons. You don't want to have your phone fall to the ground and get ridden over by your bike.

Noro Pentagon

Noro Pentagon
Originally uploaded by sunasak

Here's an enticing glimpse of the project I started at Chicks with Sticks yesterday. While listening to an online meeting at work I had a flash of insight about something I wanted to make, so I marched on over after work and got some Noro Kureyon and another coordinating yarn to get moving on it. That pentagon is the beginning of the project. I think you can see it has five sides from the photo. Tomorrow I will share more of what I am doing with it. Hint: it will be felted, but not all of the item will be felted! And another yarn will be involved.

I was reading about knitting pentagons on one of the blogs I read and it gave me the idea for this thingie. It's a fun shape and will make a great basis for my project!

You'll note that it doesn't have my usual pretty increases, just KFB. And the start is not attractive either--my circular crochet cast-on would not tighten so I just did a Turkish one then turned that into a circle. Next time I think I'd crochet cast on 5 then increase on the first row to ten, knit a row, increase in every stitch again, then commence to increasing every third row, which is what the instructions I read said to do to make it come out nice and flat.

Since I am going to felt this, I am not too concerned about how the center and increases look. They will get all smooshed up in felting (yeah yeah, I know it's really fulling). At least I hope so. I just realized I now have a front-loading washer. I hope it felts.

Still working on my Neptune socks at work on lunch break and whenever we go anywhere and I am not driving, so they will get done. I am almost to the heel. Everyone at the yarn shop admired their extreme loveliness.

Blast from the Past: EntreLucy Bag

EntreLucy Bag
Originally uploaded by sunasak

I have no current knitting excitement to report . I am just knitting away on the second sock of the pair I posted about yesterday. Its name is now Neptune, as the colorway was re-dubbed by a sock-knitting list member after a discussion of why colorways make no sense, with "Hercules" as an example. The colors are more Piscean/Neptunian!

So, with that little news I decided to post another past project. I believe this bag was knitted around the holidays in 2005. I was in a big craze for knitting entrelac after the Winter Olympics, when I made my first entrelac felted bag (I posted about it here .) I was enjoying that whole knitting backwards thing so much that I wanted to do more. And I had a bunch of leftover Silk Garden from my modular vest (posted about here ). So, I got out the trusty ole Lucy Bag pattern and looked at it. Sure enough, the base ended up with exactly the right number of stitches to do some number of 8-stitch motifs in entrelac. I knitted up a bottom and then entrelac-ed to my heart's content. Of course, I had to go buy another ball of yarn, ruining my virtuous idea of using only stash for the bag. But it's OK. I liked it a lot. I even liked my seed stitch handles. Nice texture and I like seed stitch a lot now that I am a continental knitter (hated all that switching back and forth when I knitted the other way).

Then I washed it. Why? Because someone at the LYS had wondered if Silk Garden would felt. I didn't think so, but decided to see what would happen. Wow! What happened was that the Silk Garden got very very soft. It didn't shrink much, maybe a bit. But WOW is that a soft bag.

I use it to carry projects, though right now I am using other bags more. I should have lined it, because needles poke through it. But I hate to sew anything other than a rectangle.

There's a woman who comes to the LYS who made a similar bag in shades of purple and felted it. But she used entrelac on the bottom, too, making smaller and smaller diamonds. That is one beautiful bag.