Dani's Knitting Notes

This was inspired by a design for an origami 'puzzle purse' which I saw in a book from the library.  I started thinking about whether I could make one out of knitted fabric.  I played about with making them out of the bottom of a tetrapak carton.  By coincidence, I then found a lovely leather one for sale in the street.  That one was called a Moroccan purse.  Here's a web page with a very interesting discussion of these purses and their history in origami.

Then I was given Modular Knitting for my birthday, and thought this would be an ideal project for that technique.  I made a prototype out of very thick wool on smallish needles, as I thought the fabric would need to be quite stiff.  This nearly worked, but everything was then too thick to fold down very nicely.

I decided the sides of the box should be stocking stitch, to make them thinner.  This meant I couldn't use Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer's basic square technique, and had to do some calculation to work out how to make mitred squares that would end up square.  Because mitred squares have a diagonal crease in them already, I thought these would be ideal for the sides of the box.  I had the brilliant idea of switching from plain to purl in the middle of each row, so that the squares would be reversible, and could be arranged to show the plain stitches uppermost when the purse is folded.

I'm quite pleased with it, though of course it's not as good as a leather one, because I've lost the stiffness and so the fold doesn't actually make a very good fastening.