Knit the bride a special honeymoon pouch

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, May 27, 2006

In this week’s Craft Corner, we offer a suggestion for a craft party made to order for a maid of honor and the bridesmaids in her entourage – no brides, please, as the group will be making a gift for the lady of the hour.

We call our project the honeymoon pouch, and the idea is to knit or crochet a pouch that will contain money and gift certificates or gift cards for the newlyweds to use on their honeymoon.

Here’s the deal: The maid of honor and bridesmaids will each select a different white yarn and knit part of the piece using that yarn. Each person can knit her part while the group visits, enjoys refreshments or works on other wedding or bridal shower favors.

Experienced knitters in the group may have to help those who aren’t as skilled, but everyone can do at least one or two rows. One person can be designated to finish the pouch either by virtue of having exceptional knitting or crocheting skills, or by drawing straws.

To make the pouch, cast on 20 to 24 stitches on size 10 or 11 needles, then do a plain garter stitch until the piece is long enough to fold up once, then up again to form a double-slot pouch deep enough to hold money and gift certificates.

Keep in mind that you’ll also need a closing flap, created by decreasing one stitch on each side of the piece until you’re down to eight or 10 stitches across, then binding off.

To secure the side and finish the pouch, switch to crochet and single crochet down one side, across the bottom, up the other side and around the edges of the closing flap; slip stitch to the first single crochet.

Make a loopy lacy edging by chaining three and single crocheting in each single crochet space around.

Finish by adding ribbon roses, bows or other embellishments as desired, and present the filled pouch to the bride at her shower or a special luncheon.

Variations on this project include a smaller pouch – we crocheted our sample – for gift cards.

Begin by crocheting a base chain a bit longer than the width of a standard gift card and, using double crochet, make a piece long enough to fold a pouch and top flap.

Fold one end up to form the pouch, then use the same single crochet and chain three-single crochet process to finish; embellish as desired.

Yet another variation is a single-slot money holder – we knitted ours – using one yarn only. Just knit a rectangle with a tapered flap edge and follow the same instructions for folding and finishing as above.

Our single-slot sample also serves as an example of a major goof-up that we were able to save with a couple of ribbon roses.

Once we started closing the sides of our single-slot piece, the pouch seemed to take on a life of its own and grow widthwise. It ended up the correct dollar bill size up and down, but we had enough room to lay three bills end-to-end across.

The mistake we made was casting on way too many stitches for the lacy yarn we used.

To fix our foul-up, we finished the pouch with the crocheted edging, but tied off the extra length on each side with a ribbon rose.

Local crochet event

Fans of popular knit and crochet author Debbie Stoller can learn to crochet a trendy scarf at 1 p.m. Saturday at The BookWorks, 1510 Third St., Marysville; phone 360-659-4997. Fee is $5, which includes instruction and everything you need to make a scarf from Stoller’s “Happy Hooker” crochet book; advance registration required as space is limited.

Reader’s recommendation

In response to our recent column on learning to knit, we received a call from Sue Hulbert suggesting that we check out Country Yarns in Snohomish.

We were delighted to get this referral as we had tried to find Country Yarns several months ago, but not knowing the actual shop name or phone number, we gave up after several fruitless trips through the Snohomish business district.

When we contacted owner Teresa Wilson, she was able to guide us straight to the front door, and we found a treasure trove of specialty yarns, instruction books and knit and crochet supplies inside. In fact, we were unable to get out the door without purchasing a lovely hank of silk yarn and a book on felted jewelry (felting is a favorite craft of Teresa’s).

Country Yarns offers free beginning knit and crochet classes at 10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Wednesdays, as well as a variety of $20 workshops including Socks 201, Finishing Techniques and Knitting Errors: Spot &Fix.

If you’re interested in a particular topic or project, just mention it to Teresa and you’ll probably see it on an upcoming workshop schedule.

Country Yarns is at 629 Lincoln Ave., Snohomish. Be sure to call 360-568-7611 or 866-554-9314, or e-mail countryyarns@gmail.com, for directions to the shop as it is a bit tricky to find.

Shop hours are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; noon to 8 p.m. Thursday; closed Sunday.

Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.