The bag I knitted was made on a 'circular' knitting needle - or basically two knitting needles connected by a plastic wire. Here James is modelling my knitting needles - showing how (if they were lazers) they'd make great weapons.
The finished 'body' of the bag - modelled as a helmet cozy by our cousin, Michael.
The scariest part was 'felting', where I had to take the project that I'd worked so hard on and put it through a couple cycles of super hot in the washing machine. It causes the wool yarn to 'felt' together and it basically melts the stitches together and the overall project shrinks. It is now a super strong bag, but I was really worried about doing it incorrectly - maybe shrinking the bag too far.
I really procrastinated the felting part - Mom's birthday was July 6th. On July 8th we were driving to Idaho for the family reunion and I needed to have it done by then. So I felted the bag on July 7th and let it dry and shape on July 8th before heading out the door.It is primarily inteneded for a scripture bag, but I didn't want to plop my scriptures into the wet bag, so I improvised. This also let me put a 'flat base' onto the bottom. 
And then we were in Idaho, but Mom's bag didn't have any handles! So James and I stopped by craft warehouse before driving up to Cascade. And on our 2-hour drive up Highway 55, I used a pair of needle nose pliers to put the 'hardware' on the bag.
And here is the finished project - Happy Birthday Mom! Picture was snapped on July 25 by Kurt, because I forgot to take any pictures of the finished project. 
I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I have enough yarn to make another bag/purse. I do think I want to think of another way to do the handles. And definitely not worry about the felting part, the washing machine & hot water did all the work!