Plarn Knit Bag Pattern

Here is my first pattern ever!
This was done on size 10 round knitting needles.

Cast on 120 stitches.
Knit rows 1-20

Row 21:
Cast off 20 stitches
Knit 40
Cast off 20
Knit 40

Row 22:
Cast on 20
Knit 40
Cast on 20
Knit 40

Knit 2, Purl 2 until it's a good length (mine was 12").

Decreasing:
Row 1: Knit 2, Purl 2 together
Row 2-4: Knit 2, Purl 1
Row 5: Knit 2 together, Purl 1
Row 6-9: Knit 1, Purl 1
Row 10: Knit 2 together, Purl 2 together
Row 11: Knit 1, Purl 1
Row 12: Knit 2 together, Purl 2 together
Row 13: Knit 1, Purl 1

Now run the plarn through the loops of the remaining stitches. There should be about 10 of them. If the bag wrinkles because it's pulled too tightly too quickly, repeat row 12 and 13 until it's ready to be tied off.





I put a design on mine of a recycle sign. I made two mistake. The pattern is backwards! I printed the image onto graph paper to determine where I should stitch with brown bags instead of white bags. I did not flip the image in order to maintain the correct direction when I flipped the bag right side out (it was knitted inside out). The second mistake was that I assumed stitches are square. That is, they are the same height from top to bottom. When I started the pattern I realized that they are much wider than tall. So I doubled my design pattern. Where I had planned to do one row of knitting per row of squares on the graph paper, I actually did two. The ratio must not be exactly 1:2 though, because the pattern does look stretched from top to bottom.





Something else that I had no control over was a natural spiraling that happened as I knit. This means that the design, which was supposed to be centered around the handle, was not quite.






Soon I'm going to start on another bag and will update the pattern and post directions for transferring an image to a knit pattern.