Beware of Camel Bottom

Bear Number 102

While I am trying to come back fulltime to the Bears for Africa my thoughts still travel in various directions. I think of my stash. Of unfinished projects. One of which is a knitted tote bag. It involves ten skeins of yarn. Ten skeins from seven different countries. The ambassadors of my daughter’s four months trip through the middle of Europe, a slice of North Africa and the tip of Turkey. Two come from Morocco, one brown the other gray. Soft. Easily torn. Spun from the coats of camels. Two skeins traveled from Belarus. A sunflower yellow and a bright green. She explained that they remind her of country houses in Minsk.

“As local as it gets,” she said.

A fluffy two-stranded gray- brown- beige ball arrived from Prague. The yarn from Lithuania is similar in texture but stronger in tone. The label is printed in a mix of German and English words, telling me that the yarn is made in Italy. My daughter’s comment accompanies its soft texture.

“The dark blue one is from Vilnius; it reminded me of the sea and since Lithuania is a Baltic country it seemed appropriate.”

Ah, but there are two from Vilnius. The second one is a large, grey, unruly skein, bought from a farmer. Homespun. An opportunity she couldn’t resist. The label on the light blue yarn from Gdansk looks German; no domestic yarn sold in Polish shops, it seems. And the pink yarn from Istanbul is actually a cotton blend with European influence. I asked about the Ukraine and Slovakia. We found a pale blue-gray ball of thinly spun wool in a forgotten package. Bought in L’viv. Or L’vov, as it used to be called. But what about Slovakia?

“I was sure a little mountain village would have yarn, but I couldn’t find any,” she answered.

I took photographs of these foreign treasures, and labeled them with the countries of origin. I imagined color sequences. That’s when I first thought of knitting a bag. It would be a shoulder bag, lined with cotton, probably zippered or closed with a button. After looking at several patterns online I realized how difficult it would be to combine the varying weights of yarn into a smooth surface. There was only one answer. Felting. In the old days felting was the unwanted result of inexperienced washing of wool fabric, but in recent years it has gained art status, because only wool can be felted; acrylic yarn does not respond much to hot water and prolonged agitation.

I did felt the bag. Imagine my disappointment when the bottom thinned and holes appeared. Was it because the Camel yarn was too loosely spun? Maybe the fiber was too short? Or I just didn’t make a good decision in agitating the bag in my washing machine in hot water. Whatever the reason, the camel yarn bottom has to be reinforced, which means the bag is waiting for further action. In the meantime I photographed it with “make-believe” flowers, paper cutouts to stand in for the flowers I will crochet from the yarn of Belarus and Istanbul. The bag imitates a landscape with brown and green for the land, blue for the sea, and light blue for the sky. It is, perhaps a utopian landscape foiled by the unpredictability of a Camel bottom.

Bear number 102 appreciates the commotion, slipping into the baggy photo session to show off his beautiful colors. He makes me smile while I carry the unfinished tote back to the “waiting room” and continue to knit Bears.