Yes, it’s true. I am a felter.
The bag is still drying – I’ll get pics once it’s closer to dry. But, either my expectations are low, or this felting thing is not so hard after all. Can’t wait to use this bag (and start working on the next felting project – a glasses case for Redbeard… though in this weather I should be thinking about a nice cloche hat…)
Here’s the pre-felted final bag in all its non-felted glory:
The bottom looks only mildly screwy, especially from a comfortable distance:
The pattern actually deliberately causes those raised stitches. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – and in this case it’s actually true!)
I learned a bunch with this pattern – I learned the wrong way to roll a ball of yarn (unless you like unpicking wooly knots), I learned that knitting in the round mostly means not having to purl (I like knitting in the round), and I learned the ssk stitch. All very cool. But the best thing, bar none, was I learned the kitchener stitch:
Redbeard swears I actually said out loud “Holy crap – it works!”
Now, I get to go learn how to felt in a front-loading washing machine. After some googling, I’ve decided to follow this set of instructions that appear highly rated by other felters. So, as much as it kills me – I’m not felting yet until I make a test patch.
So close!
I have an absolutely gorgeous basket that my mother made that I’ve been using now as a knitting basket. But… something tells me that I may have to either (a) impose some self-control with starting new projects or (b) get a bigger basket.
Off to the basket store….
I have been knitting, I swear. In fact, a couple days ago two things happened: my friend Gina pointed out a pretty scarf pattern and I realized my daughter and I had forgotten her friend’s birthday. So, a quick trip to the yarn store and about 1000 Yarn Overs later:
This was an easy scarf as advertised, except I should have paid more attention to the comments about the pattern (“It only takes one skein, so you know it can’t go forever”). Over 1000 purl stitches in a row (literally, in a single row)… and the yarn, while beautiful, is fiddly to work with so I don’t think that I’ve improved my purl technique (the opposite, maybe!). I will say, the best thing about working with mohair (or mohair-like substances) is that it masks mistakes really well. Which is good, because as far as I can tell, it prompts more mistakes, too.
Still – love the pattern! I’ll definitely try it again…
So it turns out the default header image was making it impossible to read the site header. So we talked for a few minutes and came up with the idea of a glass of beer on a scarf.
So I got out the tripod, setup a nice shot, took several minutes to get a good glass of beer poured (from our last batch of over-carbonated homebrew), played with the exposure a bit, and generally took a bunch of pictures to make sure I got at least one good one.
Then I took the camera off the tripod and took one last picture by hand. So of course that was the best one and the tripod and all that fiddling was a waste of time…
My local knitting shop finally opened. I dragged Redbeard along so we could go to lunch together afterwards, figuring it would be pretty quiet. Boy, was I wrong! Apparently there were lots of ladies who were itching to get their hands on more yarn. (Maybe some new year’s resolutions being started?) Â Plus, the shop was stuffed (over stuffed!) with all kinds of knitting things. (Gotta take my mom the next time she comes to town!)
So, Redbeard and I tried very hard not to step on anyone’s toes (unsuccessfully, on my part, I’m afraid) and get some yarn for the market bag project. I wanted to do a leafy green with brown accent, but I couldn’t find a single type of yarn that had both a great green and a great brown. So, I went with the perfect green and a nice, rich yellow.
I really should be working on the things they pay me for, but I couldn’t resist getting a start on this whole knitting in the round thing. The squeamish may want to look away for the next picture, though I think it could be going *much* worse:
My practice tries with starting an 8 stitch knitting in the round (with another yarn) were unmitigated disasters, so I’m actually kind of happy with this. Plus, the worst of the messiness will get obscured with the felting (right… right?). I will try to sew the tail in tohelp make it more solid, too.
But, first, back to “real” work….
(Isn’t that green gorgeous? That will be the main body of the bag and handles. The yellow is the bottom and a small part of the handle.)
Today’s Groupon was for a local place called The Laboratory, which was described as having a rotating selection of 30 craft beers and meaty sandwiches. So we talked our daughter in to going there for lunch, but they weren’t opening until 3pm. So much for that…
So, I’ve decided to try to tackle this bag that I mention in my last post. One of the very first links on Google (for “knitting in the round”) turned up this video. This looks completely doable to me. I ran off to Michaels to get the right needles, but they don’t have the right yarn (even after I figured out what the heck “Aran weight” yarn meant). My local yarn shop (which I didn’t even know existed yesterday) is closed until Monday. Ugh! Must wait…
In the meantime, I finished my daughter’s blue scarf and then I started, and restarted (and restarted) a “sock” for my laptop. But, then my daughter showed me a knitting pattern for a scarf in a book she’s been really enjoying (The Magic Thief) – how could I resist switching to that? (Side question – just how many times CAN you unravel and knit with the same yarn?) Sure, I just finished a scarf for her… but her brother has a scarf AND a hat (and is now angling for mittens. Ugh – mittens?! I could probably manage some sort of bag-like device that fit over his hands and tied around his wrists with a draw string… maybe…)
After my daughter went to bed, I realized that I may have gotten over my head with the scarf, too. It turns out it has a “keyhole” at each end that requires having two balls of yarn going at the same time to work each side of the scarf around the keyhole. I got spooked by this and when the instructions offered a  non-keyhole alternative, I took it. I’m regretting that a little now, because upon second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. But, in the meanwhile, I’m discovering all kinds of cool things you can do with knitting and purling:
Unfortunately, I’m also learning that I really need to remember what stitch I’ve just, uh, stitched (stutch?) because the knobbly part at the bottom starts to look pretty weird if I get off by one K1-P1. Muttering out loud while I knit gets me some weird looks from Redbeard, so I’ve got to come up with some system. Maybe the way a hold the yarn out of each stitch? My purl stitch “technique” is still pretty “fluid”, though…
My hideously poor short term memory also means I also can’t keep track of how many rows I’ve done and so I’ve just been eye-balling the checked squares to make sure they’re square. Â I guess I’d better figure out a trick for that, too. The problem is worse because I can’t tell how to count rows after I’ve done them!
Still – I really like how the scarf is going so far. I think I will try the “keyhole” thing at the end of the scarf.
Working on my daughter’s scarf:
And now that it’s really, really not a secret– here’s Redbeard’s scarf:
I’m starting to think beyond scarves, now… and I have my eye on this project as my “work up to” goal. Felting is what got me re-interested in knitting in the first place.
A couple years ago, my mom decided to move on to the next generation and teach my daughter to knit (since I was clearly a lost cause). Because we don’t live that close, she sent her a book to help her remember after we’d gone back home. I was looking at the book the other day and decided to both learn to purl and knit a hat. (Why not?)
So, I took the remainder of the red yarn from my son’s scarf and made him a hat!
Why did nobody tell me how magical this whole knitting thing is? (Oh, wait, she did…)
I only had instructions for an adult-size hat, so I had to improvise a bit on the number of stitches, but it fits!
This purling thing is not so bad, actually….
Totally sold on this knitting thing…