I couldn't get excited about knitting with yarn due to some "failed experiments" as a teen, but when I found out you could knit with fabric strips, I had to try it! The book that inspired me was "Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Knitting by Cyndy Lyle Rymer. I love the feel and texture of these bags... and it is fun to go through your stash and find colors that look great knitted into a purse like these. Even some of those fabrics whose prints you wonder "what were you thinking when you bought"...look good when torn into strips and knitted. In the book is a method for attaching the strips to each other without gluing or sewing which speeded up the time it takes to knit the purse. It involves cutting a slit close to the end of one strip and inserting the end of one strip into the other.
I did some purses with rope handles and some with fabric knit handles (which I had to reinforce by sewing grossgrain ribbon to the underside to keep the handle from stretching out too much). Either way works...the rope handle takes less labor and brings in an added element.