I have this great little Baggallini cross-body bag that I got before our trip to Germany several years ago because it is big enough to hold a passport, plus a few cards (ID and/or payment), my phone, a key fob, and a bit of cash. And it's RFID shielded. It makes a great alternative to carrying a full-size purse, and I have worn it many, many times.
My only complaint about it has been that the 1/2-inch wide grosgrain ribbon they used for the long (almost 56-inch) strap would start feeling uncomfortable against my neck when I had the bag loaded down with the weight of all my stuff.
The solution I came up with was to knit a cover for the strap. I wanted the cover to fit closely around the underlying strap and also be the same color (black) to draw as little attention to the cover as possible.
I also knew that the cover needed to be knitted, because although I could have made it faster if I had crocheted it, I knew that the lumpier nature of crochet stitches would be a tactile issue for me while wearing it. Sometimes you just can't beat the smoothness of knitted stockinette.
The smoothness factor is also why I opted to knit this in the round on DPNs instead of knitting a long strip and then seaming it around the strap. Knitting it flat would have been easier, but knitting it in the round meant that it was evenly smooth all the way around (no seam), and knitting it around the strap meant that once the knitting was long enough, the project would only need a bit of finishing on each end to secure the ends to the strap, and then it would be done.
Yes, it absolutely was super awkward and fiddly to knit this around the strap with DPNs. But I think I saved myself a different sort of difficulty by not knitting the tube separately and then trying to thread the strap through it afterward.
Using Red Heart Super Saver in Black, I cast on 9 stitches, then divided those across 3 DPNs (5 mm size) with 3 stitches per needle. Then I joined to knit in the round and just kept going until the cover was long enough. I left a long tail at both the beginning and at the end to sew the ends of the cover together around the ends of the strap. Then I hid the tails inside the tube, and it was all done. It took me three days of knitting (with several hours of knitting each day) to complete the project.
But I am very pleased with how this turned out, and I know it's going to make wearing my little bag much more comfortable for years to come.
