Crocheted African Flower Bag

Well I keep crocheting these African Flowers and the blanket is getting so heavy so I thought I better find a new use for them - so here's my African Flower Handbag!

With my blanket I have joined-as-you-go with a different colour round each hexagon but for this project I outlined each one with a charcoal wool (this Sublime shade).
It means a double wall of charcoal but I really like the way the flowers pop out at you.

Can you see that odd shaped flower at the bottom of this 'work in progress'? Yes it's a Half African Flower! I've wanted to work out a pattern for this for a while now so that I can start the final round on my blanket (before it smothers me). In the end it was very straight forward, but I will print the pattern soon.

I used quite cheap plastic handles as it was all I could find in a hurry. Since then I have found some lovely wooden handles so I will have another bash and try to get a different shaped bag.

Here's the other side. There are lots of different versions of African Flower bags on the Flickr group.

I wanted to line it with something contrasting, but due to the dark wool and the holes in the crochet, anything other than a dark fabric showed through the front, so I lined it with Kona Charcoal.

It's going to make a great wool bag!

Here it is again, full of lovely wool and in the beautiful bright sunshine we have had this week (and today). The whole thing was made with a mixture of Sublime extra fine merino and Rooster almerino wool, all DK.

When I have something so obviously beautiful as this bag I like to take it all around the 'farm' and take photos of it in different locations, like hanging from the apple tree here. Sorry to sound so boastful but I just love this pattern - it's not me, it's the African Flowers!

This is to show you how the hexagons wrap around the bottom...

...and around the sides! It was made like a tube with no seams, just an inch of double crochet to join in the bottom corners. I love how you can do this with crochet!

One last look at this beauty *sigh*.
Thanks for your patience dear readers!