Happy Birthday, Sharon!

For my sister's bday, I'd made her a little Sophie bag (around the time that my parents were here visiting). Now that she has it, I can finally post about it. :-)

I made the bag using Cascade 220 (of course), in Black, medium rose (#9424) and light pink (#8114), on size 10 needles. I made a pocket big enough for an id or credit card on the inside by picking up 19 stitches, knitting 20 rows, then binding off and sewing up the sides. Here are the exterior and interior before felting:


I ran it through two cycles so that the stitches would be completely invisible, which led to a smaller Sophie than others than I've seen. For comparison's sake, here are before-and-after measurements of different parameters of the purse:

	Prefelt:	Postfelt:
Base->Top:	10"	5.25"
Circ. of Opening:	17"	14"
Base: Width: Height:	7.5" 6.25"	6.75" 4.25"
Pocket: Width: Height:	5.25" 4.25"	3.75" 3"
Straps:	28"	19"

I was really happy with the result overall. If I could go back I would have made the stripes a little wider and the pocket a little deeper. Here it is blocking:


In the foreground, you can see the pieces of a flower that I made to go with it. The flower turned out to be much too big, so I made an even smaller piece to add, which is awaiting felting in this picture. Here's the finished flower:



Instructions for the finished flower (composed of a dark pink "smaller flower" and a light pink "larger flower") are here:
Smaller flower:
Knit 5 petals in color A:
Cast on 5 stitches, knit 4 rows in stockinette.
Row 5: knit 1, CDD, knit 1
Row 6: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.
(CDD = Centered double decrease: sl 2 stitches to right needle, pull
right stitch over left. sl st back to left needle. pull left stich
over right. RS: K remaining stitch. WS: P remaining stitch)

Sew in any loose ends, then take a new piece of yarn, thread it through the base of all the petals, and pull tight. The petal should dimple. Sew back and forth to close up any gaps.

Larger Flower:
Knit 5 petals in Color B:
Cast on 7 stitches, knit 6 rows of stockinette.
Row 7: K2, CDD, K2
Row 8: K1, CDD, K1
Row 9: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.
Sew in loose ends, then bind together as for smaller flower.

Leaf:
Cast on 9. Knit 9 rows. Dec 2 every other row, bind off last stitch.
Sew in ends.

Felt, felt, felt.
Trim off excess fuzzies, then sew (with thread) the two flowers together, the leaf to the back of the flower, and a bar pin or clasp onto the back. I added metallic thread and 3 beads as an accent to the front. The finished flower is about 3" x 3.5".

If you want to make the larger petals visible in the blocking photo, just keep increasing your cast-on size by two.