I did stranding for totoro's ears (also a first), and it came out all puckered. I felted the bag, and it just compounded the problem. In retrospect, I really wish I had frogged the top part. The nose looked fine when I tossed it into the washer, and lopsided when it came out of the dryer. Don't know what happened there.
The front didn't felt as well as the back. And the handle is a lot longer than I expected. It shrank *maybe* 2 cm! I guess because I used garter stitch? It shrank in width instead. The opposite of stockinette??
The lining. OMG. Excuse me while I toss the sewing machine over my balcony. Actually, it's really heavy, maybe you can help me lift it, too? I sewed, and ripped out seams, and re-sewed. And oops, re-ripped out more seams, and more sewing, and ew, what a PITA. I don't think I'll be attempting any more projects which include sewing. My rudimentary skills will be limited to re-attaching stray buttons from now on, tyvm.
Oh, and I picked out thread to match the bag. But I forgot I'd need to sew all the lining together too. So all my sloppy sewing is in super-obvious turquoise thread.
Ok, enough whining. On to the interesting stuff.
Yarn: Paton's Classic Merino. The blue yarn I dyed with kool-aid. 3 packs of Blue Moon Berry, and 3 packs of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade.
Pattern: based loosely on the SnB Punk Rock Backpack. I did up the totoro chart myself. (which looked great on paper, but seems ill-proportioned as a knitted object. If I were to do it again, I'd probably add a few more rows (10 maybe?) around row 20.) clicky~
Needles: 4mm.
pre-felting
and post-felting
and the inside
x-posted to punk_knitters
