A Tunisian Ta-Dah!

    Well, it’s finally finished! A bit later than I was hoping it would be, and if I hadn’t been a little distracted by the Yuletide Blanket at times it wouldn’t be, but it is, now, done! Yay! And here also is my first Ta-dah post of the year. But it’s not only that, it’s also my first Tunisian Ta-dah and, it occurs to me, my first self designed item Ta-dah! Crikey, I’m surprised I’m not having a head rush or something.💫😵💫

 

    You’re probably wondering what it actually is because I know I haven’t told you yet. Well, one of the cool yarny things I like to do is French Knitting🇫🇷, but it usually just gets put in any bag that’s available, usually a carrier, and the resulting cord ends up sort of homeless. But no more! Because I have made a bag especially for French Knitting, and I must say I’m rather chuffed with it!😀

 

    It all came to about because of these re-usable fruit and veg bags you can get from the supermarkets. As soon as I saw them I thought💡, “Oooh, wool bags!,” because, you know, I am slightly obsessed, and then I remembered me French knitting. Another “Oooh” moment later and I thought it would be the perfect project for Tunisian Crochet!💡 Now, it’s not often my brain works quite this well so I decided to go with it and I’m so pleased I did because it’s been really enjoyable and has got me really fired up for Tunisian work in general, which I feel has given me a lot more focus for the year ahead. 

 

Other Supermarkets are available...

    It also gave me a good opportunity to use one of the wooden Tunisian Hooks my Father made for me last year. As I already knew I would be using Double Knitting yarn, it’s what I have most of, I used the 5-6mm one as the rule of thumb for Tunisian Crochet is to use a larger hook than the one recommended for the yarn you’re using. And it worked beautifully! There was no snagging or splitting, and it felt really comfortable to hold. And I can’t wait to try one of the others! (Sneak Preview: I already have!😉)

 

    I wanted the two sides of the bag to reflect the French Knitting I do in some way, so my idea was to use a variegated yarn one side, and simply do stripes on the other. This is because I use variegated yarn for French Knitting for its immediate decorativeness, and the effect is small stripes or bands of colour. The yarn for one side was a no-brainer. I’d had the Blue/Green variegated yarn for some time, it was a Christmas🎄 present🎁 from my sister, but had never really known what I wanted to do with it other than French Knitting. I’m so pleased I didn’t use it for that though as I think it has worked incredibly well with the Tunisian Simple Stitch. 

 

    The three colours for the striped side were just grabbed from one of the many wool bags we have. I thought the colours looked really good together and I was pleased that I didn’t procrastinate over it, just grabbed ‘em and said, “Yes!”👍 I’d already decided to top, bottom and edge the bag with a dark colour and thought that Navy would have a bit more interest to it than just black. It also repeats a colour from the variegated yarn and works nicely with the three stripe colours.

 

    Another reason I’m so pleased with this project is that it was a good learning exercise too. Using videos on Youtube and the book I got (The Tunisian Crochet Workshop, by Michelle Robinson) I was able to learn about changing colours, taming the curl and the benefits of edging and, perhaps most importantly, blocking. I had never blocked anything before, but I knew it was something that I would probably have to do with this project because of the tendency Tunisian Crochet has for curling. Luckily, and thankfully, just when I was getting to the stage of needing to block, Lidl had a hand held clothes steamer as one of their special buys!👍 And I must say it works really well.

 

    I used a 4mm regular Crochet Hook to edge the two panels with a round of slip stitches, followed by a round of Double Crochet (UK), and then joined them together with another round of DC.

 

    The top of the bag gave me a bit of bother,😖 as it became apparent that my first idea for attaching it to the veggie bag was not going to work, so in the finish I just stitched it in place with a sort of running stitch. And then I replaced the pull cord with a longer one, and to really finish it off nicely, my Father made me a little Acorn to attach to the end, which I think looks smashing!😁😁

 

Idea One: Fail!

Idea Two: Success!

    And there you have it! It’s simple but effective and it does what I want it to, and you can’t really ask for more than that! Ta-dah!🎆👏