Miche Bag Cover Knitted in Entrelac

I grabbed a skein of Schaefer Yarn's new Handpainted Chris yarn in Patsy Mink colorway.  Here's what it looks like in a skein, and then in a center pull ball.  (This is awesome yarn; very nice hand and the colors are gorgeous.)

I started on a 6x6 entrelac pattern similar to the one used here.  And the Knitty Otter blog has a marvelous tutorial for learning entrelac.  

With the handpainted variegations, something weird and magical happened...but I thought, "There's no freakin' way this is gonna be a scarf.  I can either frog it, or do something else with it."  It was too wide at 10.75" unstretched...and it would take 3 skeins to get a scarf of a decent length.  What could I make....hmmm...

Turns out, this is JUST the right size for the magnetic purse cover.  I probably shouldn't mention the name, since Purse Lawyers can be particularly vicious...but let's live dangerously.

Here's the finished fabric...weird, yet wonderful...I don't like the rough edges, so am knitting an I-cord to sew all around the edges.  My sister Jules is an extraordinary seamstress; I gave her an M-Cover and asked her to make me a cover for it in muslin, which we have on hand.  I'm hand sewing the knitted fabric to the muslin.

Here are a couple of pictures of what she came up with:

I'll hand stitch the cover to this side of the muslin (you'll notice this is about 11.5" wide.  But the knitted fabric stretches well. 

Here's the other side of the cover, which shows how it slips on & off.

Knitted i-cord, size 7 dpns, 4 stitches wide, long enough to go around the edges

Stretched out the fabric and clipped it (wrong side out) to the Miche Bag Cover

Blanket stitched the i-cord to the fabric.  I started near the middle of a long side so that when the cover is on, the seam will not be noticeable.

As I go along, I'm straightening out the i-cord so it fits both the fabric and the purse edge.

I took it home to finish stitching over the weekend, and had some help from my cat Sera.

Here it is with the I-cord stitched to the entrelac & right side up. 

Closeup of where the i-cord ends are stitched together.

Otie wants to help too...

Here's the magnetic cover attached to the purse.  I still need to stitch the fabric to the muslin cover.