Market Bag on the Addi King

With single use plastic quickly becoming a thing of the past, we have to come up with reusable alternatives.

This week I would like to share my idea for a reusable produce bag.

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This pattern was challenging to come up with, because I wanted to try two things I had not seen on the Addi before.

My first problem was I wanted a drop stitch that starts part way through the bag. In the past when I have used a drop stitch technique, it had been from the beginning to the end of the project. With this mid start point, I had to figure out how to keep the stitches from unraveling past the handle section.

However, I did think of a way to stop the dropped stitches from unraveling. You see, I had been thinking backwards. I wanted to unravel, and then stop at a certain point without dropping further. When I changed the way I was thinking, I realized I should start the drop stitch in the middle, rather than stopping it.

The second problem was the handle holes. I had never left holes in an addi project before. I came up with two ideas, the first I didn’t like so I had to try something else.

On attempt one, I cast off the handle stitches on one row, then on the second row I cast on the now empty needles. It did work, but didn’t look uniform on the finished project. So on attempt two, I tried a technique similar to an afterthought thumb on a mitten I had hand knit before.

I guess you can call the technique I came up with an afterthought handle. What I did was knit the ten handle stitches with waste yarn and then, after finishing the rest of the bag, pulled out the waste yarn and picked up the live stitches to cast off with dpns.

I think these two techniques will be so useful in many other projects. For example, the handle hole technique could be used as the leg holes in a dog sweater.

Let me know what you think in the comments, and if you try out the pattern leave a picture!