I was all set to go with felted handles for this bag when I saw this lovely thing with gorgeous leather handles and changed my mind. I’d knit the i-cord handles and felted them as well but they were quickly tossed aside when I saw that photo. I went on a search yesterday for handles and found some decent ones at Michaels (sorry D&M, it’s what’s closest to me). I planned to install grommets on the top edge and then thread the split rings on the handles through those. The split rings proved much too tight for either Jason or me to manage so off I went in search of more hardware today. I found some largish lobster claw clasps that I thought would work but they proved to small. They came with looser split rings however so I subbed those in for the tight ones the handles came with and we’re good to go.

The final specs on this are: Bar Harbor Shell bag knit with 2 skeins light green Lamb’s Pride worsted, 1 skein dark green Lamb’s Pride worsted, 1 skein black Lamb’s Pride worsted on size 7 DPNs and circular. I found one error in the pattern on round 12 row 6 which the designer has now posted as an errata to the pattern. I altered the method for creating the top edge slightly in that I picked up all the loops from the bottom edge on a circular before knitting them together with the live stitches at the top of that edge and binding off. In this way I was certain I’d have the right number of stitches evenly space along that bottom edge.