Look, a knitting post!

It's a medium sized hobo-style bag based on shape and dimensional specs given to me by a friend. I didn't follow a pattern, I made it up as I knit. The whole thing started with a 2 x 2 narrow, ribbed rectangle for the bottom. I picked up stitches on both of the long edges of the bottom rectangle and knit the sides up as simple stockinette rectangles. The short sides and strap were knit in one piece from one end to the other, onto the bag, conceptually like a french braid, I picked up stiches along the edges of both sides and the bottom of the bag and knit the edge stitches into the cable as I went up until I got to the top, then knit a flat (5-stranded) cable across the length of the strap, and then used the same general process to knit down the edges on the opposite end of the bag. The only sewing up was the small cable details at the top side edges of the bag. I had planned to do a much more intricate cable on the top edge, but everything I tried was completely lost in the slubbiness of the thick cotton yarn. I started and frogged them about a million times. It is completely lined which should prevent any stretching and sagging of the knit, and it also allowed me to add the checkbook pocket that she requested. The lining is a woven cotton fabric in a slightly lighter shade of the same color (the picture color is pretty accurate). In the end I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, and it feels great to finally have it off my to do list.