Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Oops

So here’s the bag as it looked before felting . . .



and after.



Sigh.

The dimensions were 16” wide by 16” high by 7” deep. They are 13” wide by 7+” high by about 4” deep. For those of you keeping score, I was hoping for 12” wide by 10” high by 4” deep. That’s 12% over in width, 30% short in the height, 75% over in depth. The i-cord straps actually got longer during fulling (though thinner and denser); they were 31” long and are now 43”.

Rather than just throwing the blasted thing in the corner, I’m testing a new theory: that the problem isn’t my inability to get the results I’m after, but rather that I give up after the first try. I’m not ready right now to get back on the horse—cast on immediately for another, basing new numbers on these results—but I am going to try to salvage this by playing around with the fulled object a bit. It won’t be the bag I had in mind, but it might be a passable bag.

Stay tuned. The saga continues.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I'm a bit over-careful and always do a swatch and measure the gauge before felting and after felting. Even when using a suggested yarn. I use the swatching technique that Galeskas uses in the felted knits book. I haven't had any major suprises.

Perhaps you just need to find a good sacrifice to the washing machine gods?

Lisa M. said...

No, I didn't do a swatch for this particular project--but I've felted with Manos before, and while I didn't have numbers, I had a (previous) finished bag in front of me to contemplate. That one shrank more in "height" than in width, but not by this much.

Anonymous said...

you could 'twine' the 2 straps into one, and it would shorten the length. i have found i get best results doing a 'flat' strap with built-in i-cord on the edges. (a la EZ) my worst felting misadventure was a hat, where i must've miscounted # of rows--the thing looked like chico marx's hat.

purlewe said...

I know this sounds like another sacrifice to the washing machine.. but did you think about fulling it some more? My manos felted bag took 2 washes.. it wasn't the size I wanted in the ned, but it was more "bag like" after the second wash.

Lisa M. said...

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's already fairly well fulled. I'm not sure it wouldn't go any further, but it seems unlikely. And yeah, I'm afraid the problems will just get worse . . .