The Thousands

I ran into Anita from Craft Victoria at a summer barbequa before Christmas and all I could do was look at her behind. No, no, above the belt guys. Her behind her back, where I saw she was wearing one of these incredible merino wool bags. After some investigation I determined it was the knitted handiwork of textile designer Lani Sommer, under her new label Soft Shocks. Yes, the bags were available to buy at Craft Victoria. No, we could not write about them yet because Lani’s hands were not ready for this jelly.

You see, these bags are hand made by Lani in her Thornbury studio. Lani says, “The body of the bags is knit up using a hand-operated Singer knitting machine from the ’70s. I make the rope using an awesome device called an ‘embellish knit’ which is basically a knitting nancy with a winder. I make the toggles from fimo/sculpey.” The first bag took 12 hours, but now she’s got it down to a cool 4.5. It can be a bitch, but Lani says that’s okay because now she doesn’t need to go to the gym.

The best thing is that each one is a one-off. Though every bag is structurally the same, Lani changes colour combinations depending on her mood and what kind of yarn or fabric is available at the time. Though Lani knows what she is doing (she is in her final year of textile design at RMIT, majoring in Knit), she would also like to thank Diane Sullivan and YouTube for making this all possible.