First Felted Project Success

WARNING: This blog is the reason the weather got cold and we had… wait for it… SNOW yesterday. My apologies, Calgary, for jinxing the spring-like weather we had late last week by mentioning its glorious arrival here. I apparently spoke too soon. Here’s hoping the warmth returns in the near future, as knitting indoors downtown on my lunch break isn’t nearly as satisfying.

actually turned out FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. Like, exactly-what-I-was-dreaming-of fantastic.  And more.  However, in my excitement to finish and try felting I didn’t really take good notes of the pattern specifics as I went like I had planned; I basically single crocheted a flat round piece until it was about the size I wanted the bottom of my purse to be and then double crocheted up the sides until I reached the desired height. I was careful to add a few extra increase rows to the bottom and a few extra rows up the sides to take felting shrinkage into consideration. I also did two rows of slight decreases to finish off the sides and give it the shape I had in mind.

I was going to attempt doing the bag all in one piece, but I ended up doing the handle separately because it meant I could carry a smaller project around… because let me tell you, the bag before felting looked to be the size of a giant bucket that was less than ideal for toting around town.  I did the handle in double crochet as well, around 15 stitches wide and worked it like a scarf until it was (you guessed it) about the ideal length and then (you guessed it again) I added a few extra rows to be safe. I ran the entire bag through the washing machine once and it still seemed a tiny bit too big so I ran it through one more time and … BLAMMO! It was incredible. Perfect. My ideal size, and so sturdy! I am SO happy that my first felted project can go down in the books as a success! I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Speaking of successes, I’ve been practicing with DPNs every chance I get. Not so much the knitting a long tube part, but more of the starting and getting used to the first round of joins when creating something in the round on DPNs, as it seems so fiddly and uncoordinated in the very beginning. Once I get going and get at least the first row around complete it’s no sweat and I can relax, though I do need some more practice on making the joins a bit tighter to avoid ladders.  I am hungrily awaiting the arrival of my KnitPicks sock-sized DPN set so that something useful can come of all of this repetitive practice.