The Weekender Crochet Bag

This month my Minerva make is a a spot of crochet with all the trimmings using a King Cole Merino Blend Aran. It is a stunner.

I have selected Merino Blend Aran in three colours, a new hook 4.5 (I didn't have 4.5??) and a handbag strap. I bought the book, Boho Crochet a while ago and coveted the weekender bag in it on several levels. It was useful, it was big, it was stylish but not twee and it was crochet colour work which I had never done before. I LUUUURVE learning new things.

First things first, I made the bottom from grey rather than cream - who wants the bottom of a bag to be cream, I wondered?. 

I chained 67 and then dc along 66 sts until the ball of wool ran out for about 20 rows. That was the base. Next I dc all the way around for 168 sts. 66 + 66 + 18 + 18. This is the bit of the pattern I made up myself because I changed the depth of the bag.

Obviously I am not going to reproduce the pattern here (it is not mine and the book is fantastic) but basically you can keep going until you have a bag. Use stripes, patterns, use up any aran weight stash - whatever you want.

I chose cream, grey and pistachio but I think cream and grey would go with any other colour. The yarn comes in 25 shades. It is sturdy and perfect for bag making and homewares. My friend has used it for garments too and says it is good because it is super wash.

            
            
         

Now, I made a bit of a shopping error here and didn't read properly that the yarn was in 50g balls so I asked for half the amount I needed for this project by accident. I bought the rest and it would have worked out to be quite an expensive bag 9 x £2.99 but you could also use Hayfield Aran 100g balls 4 x £2.79 as an affordable substitute because after all, a bag does not need to be a Merino wool blend even though it is lovely.



You need 200g cream, 100g Pistashio and 100g of grey. 

The inside of mine is lined because I wanted pockets for tickets, phone and purse etc. This is from Minerva too and is a perfect match at a great price and comes in other colourways too.

Anywayyyy, enough stats. I just really, really like it. I will definitely make another one, maybe smaller, in random stripes when my yarn stash starts to build up again. This pattern was a bit of a stitch counter. I had to make lots of corrections because the diamonds are not diamonds which the graph pattern suggests, they are tilted rectangles which kind of confused me a bit. But hey, I really like the end result.

It is going straight to good use on a little trip to the coast next week. Thanks Minerva for some fine yarn to make a mighty fine holiday bag.

Enjoy your weekend what ever you are up to. Jo xxx