Prjónaða handtaskan mín

My hand-knitted handbag

Bonus is an Icelandic supermarket chain - You can always recognize the shops from afar by the large,pink pig with the very special look.

The first bonus business was 1989 in the industrial area Vogar in Reykjavík opened by Jóhannes Jónsson and his son Jón Jóhannesson. After a bitter price war, the competitor Hagkaup entered Bónus in 1992 and bought half of the shares; in 1993, Bónus and Hagkaup merged and formed the Baugur Group. Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson finally married in a second marriage a daughter of Pálmi Jónsson, the founder of Hagkaup. The parent company went bankrupt in 2009 as part of the Icelandic banking crisis—the owner family had taken out a loan of 30 billion ISK from Kaupþing Bank in 1998 to acquire shares and was directly affected when Kaupþing stopped all payments in October 2008 (dissolution of the bank in November 2009). Meanwhile, Bónus and Hagkaup (with other subsidiaries) belong to Hagar ehf. (To comparison to the other discounters: The first Nettó store opened 1989 in Akureyri, the first Krónan stores in December 2000 simultaneously in Reykjavík, Hafnarfjörður, and Selfoss.)

Today there is according to the homepage 33 Bónus branches in Island. Outside of Iceland, Bónus also operates 8 branches on the Faroe Islands. 

When we are in Iceland, we always like to shop at Bonus sure, but after all we also have two Bónus stores nearby (20 and 25 km away), and there are also three more supermarkets in the next town. But for some things I just prefer to go to Bónus!

Overall, I associate – like many travelers to Iceland – the cheerfully looking Bónus pig directly with Iceland!

Of course, we also have the usual Bónus promotional clothing that you can occasionally buy in stores (with the white Bónus hoodie actually coming from a second-hand shop) to bring a bit of Iceland into our everyday German life.

And I always have two bonus shopping bags in my handbag, for my shopping in the German supermarket.

Now I suddenly had the idea to get myself another one handbag to knit - with an emulated Bonus pig as motive. As a template, I picked out a picture of a Bónus pig and tried to make a knitting pattern for the pig based on it - and then I knitted.

I still had yellow Léttlopi yarn, also pink Léttlopi yarn, along with some black and a little bit of white. In addition, I bought a complete crafting set for two bags online for just under €16, consisting of a bag base with holes, an adjustable strap, and a handle with eyelets (each in black and brown). For my knitted handbag, I used the black version. Finally, I also got a pink zipper (30 cm) to be able to securely close my bag.

I knitted the bag in one piece with circular knitting needles, basically a long tube, which I then folded over so that the knitted piece is doubled and thus firmer and more stable.

I think I used 3 balls of yellow yarn, just under a ball of pink yarn, and a leftover of black yarn as well as a small leftover of white yarn. If you calculate about €5 per ball, that's around €20 for the yarn, plus roughly €2 for the zipper and €8 for the black bag set. In total, that makes material costs of around €30 for this bag here.

And on top of that, of course, there is the working hours. But for that, I now have a really beautiful unique piece that accompanies me in everyday life in Germany and always happily reminds me of Iceland!

I'm excited - a little more Iceland for our everyday life in Germany again!

Translated from here.