Superbulky Linen Stitch Knitted Bag

Before I started spinning, I often used to buy superbulky yarn.  I like big, squashy knitwear and I also like quick results.  While it is much cheaper to spin your own, the yarn I made recently was not just more uneven, but much denser than most millspun fat yarn.  While 100% wool is generally less squashy than blends and synthetic fibres, my handspun also tends to have more grist.  The maths is in this interesting post on the subject, all I really understand is that differences in grist can be assessed by measuring the weight per metre of yarn, when the yarns you are comparing have the same thickness, or wraps per inch. Higher grist means heavier, more wool fibres per metre, grist is increased by a worsted spinning style and a greater amount of twist. Some day, I may become able to calculate the amount of wool fibre I will need to spin the actual number of metres a project requires, but this was not that day.

As so often happens, I came at this project in reverse, with 105m superbulky yarn handspun from half a small fleece.  It looked like lots of wool to me.  Three strands spiralled together were 9mm wide, so using great big 9mm needles, there would surely be enough to knit a cushion cover. 
To make best effect of the naturally varied greys and the indigo dyed end of the skein, I consulted the chapter on multicoloured yarn in my favourite guru, Margaret Radcliffe's Guide to Color Knitting. Linen stitch looked good in the illustration and dead simple to do.

Cast on any odd number of stitches, in my case, 39.  
Row 1 is the right side, knit 1, and keep repeating (slip 1 with the yarn in front, knit 1) to the end of the row.  
Row 2 is the wrong side, knit 1 purl 1 and keep repeating (slip 1 with yarn behind, purl 1) til you knit the last stitch.
Repeat these two rows til you run out of wool.

Running out of wool happened while my piece was still too short to fold over into a decent sized cushion.  In practice, all the slipped stitches mean you knit two rows to gain the height you would usually gain from knitting one row and the linen stitch fabric is appreciably thicker than stocking stitch.  The pattern looked nice, anyway.  I decided to carry on regardless and make it into a bag.

Having started with a provisional cast on, I assumed grafting the last row to the first would be straightforward, if I just unravelled one stitch at a time from the cast on.  I won't try that again - nightmare bodge job in linen stitch, I'd have had a better finish from joining an ordinary cast on and cast off row. Lucky the thick knit hides a multitude of errors.  With the top of the tube of knitting folded back and the bottom sewn up, the proportions were ok for a bag. Sewn folded over into strips, the outside leg seams from my son's old black jeans made two padded handles, just threaded between the dense stitches, repurposing a jeans back pocket was an easy way of making an inside bag pocket and a small denim bird got sewn on to remind the bag carrier to keep the side without the dodgy graft facing outward. 

Embellishing a bag, it can be difficult to know when to stop. A rational woman can go insane with a pot of beads in front of her, but hey, less is more.

I name this bag 'Blackbird Singing the Blues'.  
It was a present for someone who coped admirably with hard stuff.