Felting success!

I have had my fingers in so many knitting projects this week, I nearly forgot to report on our felting party from Friday night. Although knuknitter had to miss the event in favor of rehearsal for her next play, Mom and I were joined by a cheering section of spouse-o Bill, my brother, Mel and Grant. We ate my favorte fall dinner of mushroom barley soup and salad and started felting after dinner. Why so late? Well, I hadn't finished the I-cord borders of my mosaic tote and the 7 x 4 = 28 ends to weave in at the top of the bag. Sigh. Poor planning on my part.

This photo essay shows our progress from knitting to blocking.

The week before: Mom, knuknitter and me, knitting away (thanks for the snap, Adam!)

Where we started

          

Felting in progress

     

This part was kind of tough. I'm going to have to find the manual for the washing machine before I do this again, becuase it was really hard to keep the water HOT. This Kenmore machine has that odd Calypso rocker plate at the bottom, and runs with very very low water level and not much agitation. "That's OK," I thought, "at least it will be washing in nice hot water." But several times when I put my hands in to check status, the water wasn't hot at all. I even poured some boiling water straight in. Still didn't stay very hot.

Finished & drying

     

(See the soup pot? thank heavens we were done with dinner!) Despte the water issues, I think my bag came out quite nicely. I thought the diamond panels would square up a bit more in the felting and I'm not totally thrilled with their lumpiness, but I like the bag anyway.

Things to adjust for next time:

• Buy a $3 pair of sneakers to kick the felting around in the machine
• Find the washing machine manual and figure out how to keep the water hot
• Make sure all edges of color areas look good before felting. The mosaic sections could have been picked up a bit closer to the "live stitch" for tighter diamonds.

But we declared victory anyway and we like our felty bags. We'll just have to keep at it to learn to be felt-masters!