Ali Bag for my sister

My house has that lovely wet wool smell and that can only mean one thing - another She-Knits bag is finished! This is the Ali bag knitted from Sharon's original kit. I just loooove the jewel tone colours of this bag and the construction is simply ingenious. My sister had better be nice to me between now and Christmas otherwise I'm going to keep it for myself :)

Small Ali Bag with knit (and not felted) braid

I like...you like??? I suggest, for those of you doing the Ali Bag (formerly Pipes and Braid) that you consider making the bag and the X's , assembling and felting but do the braid afterwards (or while you are felting or drying your bag as we all need to multi-task) and leaving it unfelted. The look is really good. Having the texture of the knitted against the felted is awesome. How do you figure out the length the braid should be? To do this you have to be slightly relaxed and adventurous. Knit some i-cords, maybe make them 3 ft long., secure them loosely at their ends so you can easily undo them. Braid tightly and string it though the X's to see if it measures out ok. If you need to make shorter, just undo the ends and do it. I also secured the slightly messy braid ends under one of the X's by tacking it down with some yarn.

A small Ali Bag for a customer

Customer picked color and size. The full size Ali is a 40 st cast on this one I cast on 26. So the bag is done and now I am making the braid which will have the same colors as the pipe. All those little pieces are the X's. It was fun to make a smaller one, and I love the pipe of red. I wanted to make one of the shoulder straps in red but she didn't like that idea. I thought one charcoal and one red would of been beautiful.....but she didn't think the recipient would like that. What do you think?

I decided that I am going to sew on the X's and felt the bag. Then I will knit the braid, and ready for this leave the braid unfelted....I know don't drop your needles. I think the texture will be cool.