Knit Sisters

I felted the purple and pink tote bag this morning.  Here’s how she turned out:

 

Although I have a front-loading washing machine, and there has been much discussion among knitters I know about felting items in a front-loader, I myself have had no problems at all getting things to felt in my washer.  In fact, even though various instructions you read would have you open the washer from time to time throughout the cycle, I blithely throw everything in (everything being the item to be felted and some towels or rags or something), set the washer on “hot wash, cold rinse,” close the door, push the button, and walk away, only to return when the washer has gone through its complete cycle, including the spin cycle.  I realize that this demonstrates a great deal of faith on my part, but so far it’s worked out fine, and I’ve made a number of different felted things.  (Ask Ellen for a picture of Zeno’s cat bed.)

Here’s a closer view:

 

Oh, and, by the way, I was wrong about the two rows of applied I-cord at the top of this thing.  There were three rows.  Enough said. 

Hugo says:

 

“Um, no offense, Mom, but I don’t really care about your felted bag.  Can’t you take me for a little walk?”

Melinda asked about my 5-pitch combs.  You can read more about them and see pictures here and here.  They are some of my most heavily-used tools.  I really don’t use my hand-cards since I acquired and learned how to use the combs.  Their great beauty is that they can take a dirty, messy fleece (like the one I pictured on Wednesday) and turn it into something beautiful.  It’s really somewhat addictive–seeing what’s going to come out of the combs at the end of the process.

Monica, I do think the guard hair would look great dyed in some jewel-like color.  I hadn’t thought of that–thanks for the suggestion!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 8:23 pm and is filed under It's the process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.