Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Stop Me Before I Felt Again

I give you the Caribe bag, as close to complete as it's ever going to be:



I cut the handles shorter, moved a couple of the holes they pass through (snip! snip! no worries--it's felt!), used the leftover i-cord to make a button loop, stitched down some curlicues of leftover accent colors, and layered two buttons. Redeemed? I don't know. But short of actually sewing on bells, that's as far as I can go. This was supposed to be one of the December in July projects, but it doesn't seem likely that anyone's going to want to duplicate it. If I'm wrong, backchannel me, and we can discuss materials for a kit.

Meanwhile, undaunted by my most recent failure, I got curious about what some Diarufuran I'd been crocheting would look like when it was felted. The answer? It looks good.



I don't know that it can properly be called a felting success, however, since (a) I wasn't planning to felt it when I made it, and (b) I don't know what it is now.

While I was at it, I thought I'd test out some of the Chester Farms pencil roving we got awhile back. You're supposed to be able to knit with it if you double it, or better yet, knit it double and loose and then felt it. No pre-washing pictures, I'm afraid, but here are the washed swatches:



Above, single-stranded on US #8; below, double-stranded, on US #13. Grace and Dorlynn assure me that both of these swatches are in fact felted; to me, they look incomplete, because you can still see the stitches. On the other hand, the stuff knits really nicely--more info soon.

And some catch-up from Knitting Circle last week, while I was away: Magda has finished her Pi Shawl.



Here she is draping it artfully around Cathy:



Wow!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

is the chester farms pencil roving made from the same columbia wool that their yarn is made from? i don't think their yarn felts, so wonder about the roving....

Lisa M. said...

It's got to be a different kind of wool: yes, they're quite proud that their wool yarn is virtually un-felt-able, but at the same time they recommend the roving for felting.

There's no breed info on the packaging for the roving, though.