MYBAGZING expandable crochet bag: An Honest Review

I have a confession that will not surprise anyone who has ever crocheted in a house with a cat: I have lost more yarn to Pickles than to any dropped stitch. He is eleven pounds of orange tabby who believes every loose strand is a personal invitation. So when I started seeing the MYBAGZING expandable crochet bag everywhere, I told myself the real question was not whether it looked pretty on a hook. It was whether a bag with grommets and a zipper could actually keep my project safe, my yarn tangle-free, and my thumb from aching by the end of a row.

I bought one with my own money in March, used it for six months on baby blankets, a granny-square throw, and a stack of dishcloths, and now I am going to tell you the things I wish someone had told me before I ordered. The short version: I still reach for it every single day. The longer version has a few honest complaints, because a review that only gushes is not a review, it is an advertisement.

How I've Used It

Let me set the scene, because context matters. I am 63, I have mild arthritis in my right thumb, and I do most of my crocheting in a recliner in the den with a side table and a floor lamp. My projects are not small. I make baby blankets for grandchildren, granny-square throws, dishcloths, and the occasional amigurumi, plus hats for a local hospital charity drive. That means I am usually juggling three or four colors at once, and I am the kind of crocheter who would rather frog a row than admit a mistake.

For six months, the MYBAGZING bag has been my main project bag. I have carried it from the den to the kitchen table, to the porch, and into the car for a long visit with my sister. It has been knocked off the side table by a cat who shall remain nameless, stuffed under a chair, and once accidentally left in the car overnight in Texas heat. It came through all of it looking basically the same as the day it arrived. The only real wear I can find is a faint crease where the strap folds when the bag is stored, and that showed up in the first week.

The bag measures 13.5 inches long, 10.5 inches wide, and 16 inches tall, which is bigger than it looks in the product photos. The medium size holds a respectable pile of yarn, and the zipper lets the height expand about 3 inches when I need to stuff in one more skein. I have had as many as eight skeins in there along with a half-finished blanket, and the zipper still closed. That was on a Tuesday in May, the day I decided to stop doubting the capacity claim and start trusting it.

What Nobody Tells You Before You Buy It

Here is the honest part, and I am going to lead with the thing that surprised me most: the material is wool, and it is much softer and more flexible than the stiff canvas bags I have owned. I expected something that would stand up on its own like a tote. This bag slouches a little when it is half empty. That is not a flaw, it just took me a week to get used to it. The softness is actually why it is comfortable to carry, but if you want a bag that holds its shape like a box, this is not that bag. I learned that the hard way when I set it down next to a friend's structured tote and watched mine settle into a gentle slump.

The second thing nobody tells you: the grommets are the whole point, and they work, but you have to use them properly. You thread the working strand through the grommet and close the zipper, leaving the yarn inside the bag while you crochet. The strand slides out smoothly as you work, and the skein stays put. No more yarn ball rolling across the floor. No more Pickles stalking a loose tail. The tangle-free promise held up for me through an entire baby blanket, which is the highest praise I can give any yarn containment system. I finished that blanket on a Sunday afternoon in July, and I did not untangle a single knot the whole way through.

The third thing: the shoulder strap is comfortable enough for carrying it from room to room, but it is not padded, and it is not adjustable in the way I expected. When the bag is full and I am carrying it for more than a few minutes, I feel the weight on my shoulder. With my arthritis, I usually switch to carrying it like a tote in the crook of my arm. That works fine because the bag is light, only 3.5 ounces before you add yarn, but I would have loved a padded strap. I tried adding a shoulder pad from an old purse, and it helped, though I eventually stopped bothering because most of my carrying is from the den to the kitchen table.

I have had as many as eight skeins in there along with a half-finished blanket, and the zipper still closed.

The Zipper, the Grommets, and the Cat Test

Let me talk about the zipper specifically, because it is the feature that makes or breaks a bag like this. The zipper is smooth, and I mean genuinely smooth. It glides without catching, even when the bag is stuffed full and the fabric is pulled tight. On a bag with a 1 year manufacturer warranty, I did not expect the zipper to be the part that felt premium, but it is. I have owned project bags where the zipper snagged on the yarn every single time, and I stopped using them within a month. This one has not snagged once in six months, not even on the day I packed it so full I had to sit on the floor to zip it.

The grommets are placed on the side of the bag, and they are big enough that even a bulky worsted weight yarn slides through without catching. I have also used the bag to hold fabric rolls for a quilting project, and the same principle worked. The yarn feeds out smoothly, and when I need to stop mid-row, I just pull the strand back through the grommet and close the zipper. Everything stays inside. I will say the grommet works best when the skein is sitting upright in the bag rather than on its side; I figured that out around week three after a few frustrating tangles that were my fault, not the bag's.

Now the cat test, because I know half of you are reading this for exactly this reason. Pickles has tried to get into this bag approximately four hundred times. The zipper defeats him every time. He has batted at the strand coming through the grommet, and I will not pretend he has never managed to pull a few inches of yarn out of the bag to play with. But he cannot get to the skeins themselves, and he cannot unspool an entire ball the way he did to a half-finished granny square last year. For me, that alone was worth the purchase. The one time he did hook a strand, I simply pulled it back through and zipped the bag shut, and the yarn was no worse for it.

How Much It Actually Holds

The product listing says the medium size holds a certain number of skeins, but I am a retired librarian, which means I do not trust a claim until I have tested it. So I tested it. On a normal day, I keep two to three skeins of the color I am working with, a half-finished project, a small pair of scissors, a yarn needle, and a row counter in the bag. That is my everyday load, and there is room to spare. I also added a small notebook and a pen one day when I was working out a pattern repeat, and it all fit without complaint.

When I was working on the granny-square throw, I packed it fuller than I ever have: seven skeins of different colors, the throw itself, and my notions. The bag handled it. The zipper closed, the strap held, and I could still get to every color through the top without unpacking everything. The expandable zipper adds about 3 inches of height, and that extra space is exactly what makes the difference between a bag that fits your project and a bag that fights your project. I used that extra height most on the days I carried the throw to my quilting group, because a half-finished blanket takes up more room than anyone expects.

The capacity is listed at 5.3 pounds, and I believe it. I have never come close to filling it to that weight because yarn is light, but the bag itself weighs almost nothing, which is the point. A project bag that weighs a pound before you put anything in it is a bag you will leave at home. This one is 3.5 ounces. I forget it is on my shoulder until I need it. I weighed it on my kitchen scale the day it arrived, partly out of librarian habit and partly because I could not believe a bag this size could be that light.

The Six Compartments and the Pocket Situation

The bag has 6 compartments, and I want to be honest about how I actually use them, because it is not the way the product photos suggest. The main compartment holds the yarn and the project. The smaller compartments are perfect for scissors, stitch markers, a yarn needle, and the little tape measure I am always losing. I do not use all six compartments every day. On a simple dishcloth project, I use two. But when I am working on something with multiple colors or carrying a project to a friend's house, the extra compartments are what keep me from digging through a black hole of yarn to find a single stitch marker. I keep my stitch markers in the same small compartment every time now, and I have not lost one since April.

The one thing I wish the bag had is a dedicated pocket on the outside for a hook or a small pattern printout. I know some crocheters keep their hooks in the bag, and there is room inside for them, but I like to grab my hook without unzipping anything. That is a personal preference, not a design flaw. If you are someone who likes everything zipped away, the six compartments will be plenty. I tried keeping my hook in the top of the bag with the zipper open a few inches, but that defeated the whole cat-proofing purpose, so I went back to keeping it in a small case inside the main compartment.

Who This Is For

This bag is for the crocheter who works on real projects, not just a single skein and a hook. It is for the person who has three colors going at once, who carries projects from the den to the car to the waiting room, who has ever lost a stitch marker in the couch cushions and sworn about it. It is for the person with a cat, a dog, or a toddler who cannot be trusted with a loose strand of yarn. It is for the blanket maker who needs a bag that closes completely and holds its shape when full.

It is also for the crocheter who cares about her hands. The bag is light, the strap sits well on the shoulder, and the grommet means you are not constantly reaching into the bag to untangle yarn, which is a small thing that makes a real difference when your thumb already aches. As someone with mild arthritis, I notice the difference between a project bag that works with my hands and one that works against them. The MYBAGZING bag works with mine, and that is not true of every bag I have tried.

Who Should Skip It

If you only ever work from a single skein at a time and you finish a project in one sitting, you do not need this bag. A simple project pouch will do. If you want a stiff bag that stands up like a piece of luggage, the soft wool material will disappoint you. And if you are looking for a bag with a padded, heavily cushioned strap for carrying across town, this is not the one for you. I would also say that if you never carry projects away from home, a basket by your chair might serve you just as well.

I would also gently suggest that if you are a person who does not mind a little yarn chaos, who likes to keep the current project in a basket out in the open, this bag might feel like overkill. It is a containment system as much as a bag. That is exactly what I needed. It is not what everyone needs. My friend Carol, who crochets one color at a time and finishes everything in a weekend, tried mine and said it was more bag than she would ever use. She is not wrong, and you might be Carol.