A-felting we will go!

Well, I have plunged right in to this new project, "something to be felted". I chose a pattern I got from Margaret at knitting meetup, from a shop somewhere in Minnesota, I think. Margaret's purse was very inspiring, in bright turquoise, orange and yellow -- a very fun project tote (*) ! I'm trying to recreate her success in my more muted palette.

[* 10:12 pm, edit. I should have mentioned that I believe Margaret's cool felted tote - or it's exact duplicate - was on display at Commuknity when I visited last Friday, along with the pattern I am using - mwiz]

So there you have the first four tiers of my to-be-felted tote, using the Felted Mosaic Purse & Tote pattern from Countless Sheep. The piece is about 18 inches across now. If you look at the big tote in the pattern photo and remember it starts from the bottom, you can judge my progress. I've just finished what would be first the light pink row. I plan to make my tote 7 tiers tall, like the light colored purse, running through the colors A - B - C - A - B - C - A

Fun, quick project so far, but I'm worried about the 3 dimensionality of the knitting. I expect this to turn into a more-or-less "smooth" fuzzy surface. But as you can see in the photo above, each tier is about half a stitch "behind" the tier it is joined to. I'm thinking if I want a smooth, fuzzy surface after fulling, shouldn't it be flatter now? I mean.. fulling is magical, but it doesn't acutally eliminate the third dimension does it? ("Egads, I hope not. That's where I keep all my stuff" - the Tick) So I'm going to change the way I'm picking up stitches and try picking up under both loops instead of only under the back loop. If I don't like that.. I'll try picking up under the front loop only.

At present, the bag flattens out into one big circle. I think that's because I'm adding 2 stitches on each tier. So the the gold mosaic units are 17 st, the green ones are 19 sts and the purple ones are 21 sts. I think when I stop increasing the size of the mosaic units, the piece will start to pull together more as a bag. But like all felting projects, the shape/shapelessness of the current piece is not really a good guide to what I'm going to get in the end. Just have to keep knitting!