Bean Counting

Back to the quotidian and bean counting. With help, I carefully investigated the box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans from Good Girl Purl and discovered that it contained every flavor listed but one. (In the course of photography, a few cherry, green apple, and buttered popcorn beans magically disappeared, but you get the idea.)



Top row: Bacon, Black Pepper, Blueberry, Booger, Buttered Popcorn
2nd row: Cherry, Cinnamon, Dirt, Earthworm, Earwax
3rd row: Grape Jelly, Grass, Green Apple, Lemon Drop, Rotten Egg
4th row: Sardine, Soap, Toasted Marshmallow, no Tutti-Frutti, Vomit

No one has been brave enough to try the more unusual flavors.

The beans gave me a brain wave. A couple years ago, I did a favor for a Japanese colleague and she did the obvious (to her, anyway): she gave me a narrow length of unhemmed cotton cloth. Although machine-made, it's a traditional handloom size, about 34 cm (13.5 in) wide and 90 cm (35.5 in) long, with neat selvedges and a charming edamame (soybean) print. I finally know what to do with it: while others have been busy deciphering the mysteries of the Ferragamo bag, I knit up a SoHo Sling*. The bean print will make perfect trim and pockets. And the flower pin from Good Girl Purl is the perfect spring accessory for it.



The pattern appears in Bags: A Knitter's Dozen, but I got it as a freebie at Knit Out New York. Basically, the bag is a knit tube as tall as it is wide, with the top zipper rotated 90 degrees from the bottom seam (which forms a tetrahedron, if you must know).

Knitting the tube was basically mindless. I used a jumbo ball of crochet cotton that had been languishing in stash, Aunt Lydia's Denim, tweaking the pattern to make a bigger bag in a smaller gauge than specified, casting on 140 stitches. The crochet cotton made a somewhat coarse fabric with a soft drape – a strange combination of characteristics that would be horrible for a sweater, but is just right for a sling bag.

There will be a brief pause in assembly whilst I find the right zipper, lining, interlining, and findings. The bag in the pattern is not lined, but bean-counter that I am, I prefer a more finished turnout.

* For those who don't know New York City, SoHo stands for South of Houston Street, Houston being pronounced house-ton, not hyus-ton. It's one of the trendy parts of the city. The fabulous Purl and its new sister store, Purl Patchwork, are in SoHo.