A member of our knitting group brought some leaflets to a meeting early this year. Ruth and Belinda (www.ruthandbelinda.co.uk) have teamed up with Kids Company, which delivers services to vulnerable children, those 'not properly cared for' as the founder Camila Batmanhelidjh puts it, and set up a project for knitters to make heart-shaped bags for use in therapy sessions with the young people Kids Company work with. They are trying to get some large number (can't remember the figure) by 14th February 2014. I therefore set to and made a heart-shaped bag, using one of their patterns. Unfortunately I did not read the pattern properly and left out 12 rows at the sides of the heart, making it a somewhat dumpy heart, but I decided to leave it as is rather than undo and correct. I added a little i-cord handle, a tassel at the bottom add a butterfly I found somewhere.
It occurred to me, however, that maybe boys would not be keen on a heart-shaped bag. I consulted DS, who is not particularly vulnerable, but has been a boy fairly recently and he said in no uncertain terms that he thought heart-shaped bags would not be suitable for boys, so I emailed Ruth and Belinda to see what they thought. They said something to the effect that I had made a valid point and that bags of all shapes would be acceptable. So I then made a boy bag. It started like a scarf, but after about 8 inches, I started decreasing to make a triangle at the end, the folded it in half (minus the triangle) and sewed up the sides. I gave it a toning button and to cheer it up a little embroidered a little yellow thingy (supposed to be a sun with little rays, but it could be interpreted differently - as a flower or just a funny blob). I also attached a long enough i-cord for the bag to be worn over the shoulder. I've shown two photos to show the length of i-cord in the top one and a bit more detail in the bottom one.
Both were made with acrylic DK yarn I already had, left over from previous projects. Thus they are machine washable and stashbusters (although I had quite a bit of yarn given to me recently... Oh, well).
I still have my doubts as to whether any boys would like any shape of bag, but nevertheless I sent both off with the Tunisian crochet one I made some time ago and some others made by members of the knitting group, including the stripy one made by my Mum mentioned way back. I do hope they'll do some good.
