First Foray into Felting!

Well, my attempt to make the Clutch You'll Never Give up from Leigh Radford's One Skein has not been exactly what you'd call smooth sailing.

First, as I mentioned in a previous post, I ran out of yarn when knitting it and had to rip the whole thing back, start again and omit 3 rows. Next, I didn't understand the gusset instructions and instead of looking on the internet and finding some help such as the Knitty info brought to my attention by Kahla (but unfortunately for me too late), I just went ahead and did what I thought it was saying (which of course it wasn't!). It wasn't until I had given it its first run through the machine that the penny finally dropped with gusset sewing as I now had a huge lump running along the inside of the bad and it had really bumpy bottom. I should have taken a picture of it at this stage to illustrate my disaster, but I was so reluctant to even look at the bag I had to leave it alone for a week so that it could think about its behaviour.

At this point I took it to my knitting club and asked the advice of Nina, a fellow knitter who knits the neatest felted bags and scarves you ever saw, and we decided that in any case it needed felting again so I decided to cut out the bottom, re-sew it and felt it again.

This is a picture of the naughty bag after its second felting being pulled into shape by hair clips and a hanger. I have to say that at this point I had decided that if the second felting and sewing didn't work it would be binned. However, I think you can see from the pictures above and below that actually, chopping the bottom out made a really cute size and shape.
So here, finally, is the bag finished. I must confess that am really happy with it now because it has turned out very 'clutch-bag-ish' in its more squat format. I shaved it according to Piglottie's advice and finished it with a vintage costume jewellery brooch I bought for it long before I even started knitting it, which just fabulous! I am including a close-up of the brooch below.
So, in conclusion, if you are not an idiot, this is a really nice project to knit! I just hope its new owner loves it even half as much as it hasn't loved me! (huge sigh...)...and here is a little picture of it all packaged up and ready to go!