The Twisted Yarn Cottage Bag: Bagalong for January 2016

As you may know, I am into crochet bags. In a BIG way. In one of the Facebook groups that I’ve set up – Bagalong with Crafternoon Treats – I have been dubbed ‘Queen of Bagdom’. All in fun, of course, I made my first crochet bag last February so its coming up to my first anniversary of bagaholism! In January our group is going to make The Twisted Yarn cottage bag designed by Phil of The Twisted Yarn.

Phil is amazingly talented as she can crochet and knit to an extremely high level! Very impressed by the knitting… And thanks to Phil for allowing me to use her photos to let everyone know about the Bagalong project 🙂

This is the bag that she designed and made for the Stylecraft blog tour back in September; Phil was one of the judges for the yarn colours that went into the Limited Edition pack. If you haven’t revisited Stylecraft for a while, all of these colours are now available in their Special DK range. Yay!!!

This gorgeous knitted bag is available as a free pattern on The Twisted Yarn blog – click here to find out more about its loveliness…

Revisit my blog post about the Stylecraft blog tour to get all the details of my rainbow tote bag and about the colours...

The Twisted Yarn cottage bag is our bag for January!

A little while before Christmas one of our Bagalongers, Sue, suggested that this would be a great bag for a new project for our group.

If you are not familiar with the group, its a Facebook group just for discussion of crochet bags. We have around 3,300 members and we are growing rapidly. I am apparently not the only bag-obsessed crocheter in the universe by a long chalk!!

Its a closed group for privacy reasons and mainly to cut down on spam. You have to be a member to post and to see the posts by others. But joining is free and if you want to talk crochet bags you are very welcome. We are very international with members from all over the world and we have only a few rules. The main one is BE NICE. This is a group to encourage effort and enthusiasm at all times 🙂

To join you need to make a request – Bagalong with Crafternoon Treats. It depends on the time of day that you ask to join – it could take five minutes to be accepted or it might take a few hours. It depends on whether the UK based admins are asleep or not!

Although we are doing The Twisted Yarn Cottage Bag as our project this month you don’t have to do it in January. You can start whenever you like and take as long as you like. Its all very flexible and you are welcome to post pictures of your in-progress bags and your finished creations at any time that suits you! We are not into deadlines – we just try to feature a new bag each month.

Important links you will need to make the bag

In addition to joining the groups you will need to access the pattern and tutorials:

Download the pattern for free as a pdf from The Twisted Yarn

The pattern is also available free on Ravelry

The phototutorial on the crocodile stitch used for the bag roof is here

The photo tutorial on the brick stitch used to make the bag walls is here

Yarn requirements for The Twisted Yarn Cottage Bag

Scheepjes Softfun ‘Denim’. Taupe (508): 4 balls. Brown (510): 3 balls. Grey (502): 1 ball.

Scheepjes Softfun solids. Grey (2510): 1 ball. White (2412): 1 ball. Cornflower Blue (2512): 1 ball.

Random old oddments of 4-ply yarn in green, yellow, red, and brown, for the embroidered flowers, window box, and house number.

You will also need a 3mm hook – that’s a size 11 and for hooksters in the USA, it falls half way between a C and D hook. So if you crochet quite tightly, choose a D. If you tend to have a loose tension, choose a C.

Its a smaller hook for the weight of yarn – DK/light worsted – but that’s because its a bag and the stitches need to be quite dense. Full information about the tension/gauge is provided in the detailed pattern.

If you want to substitute with Stylecraft Special DK watch this space – I am going to order the Scheepjes yarn to make my own bag but I will then compare the colours to my Stylecraft stash.

Want to find out more about crochet bags?

These are some of the bags that we’ve made this year! Click on the Bagalong tab above to find out more.