adventures in felting

I've never tried any fulled knitting projects until now. Someone in my summer knitting group did this Noni pattern and I loved the outcome of her bag so much that I bought the pattern and yarn to make my own version.

I used Paton's Classic Merino, doubled, for this. Previously, I used the same yarn on Jon's Cobblestone sweater and I don't remember it being as soft and squishy as it was this time around (maybe I'm just becoming more acclimated to working with wool?). It was quite satisfying to go through so much yarn so quickly and I love the contrast of the lemongrass and dark grey together.

I didn't get an after picture with my bag and water bottle, but the felted bag is now the height of the water bottle.

I finished up the bag, took one pre-felting photo and stuck it in the washer for one hour of agitation. It was so exciting to see the bag start shrinking. After it seemed small enough, I ran it through the final spin cycle and set it out to dry. The next morning I starting making a lining for the bag. Due to some measurement errors on my part, I made the lining too small. Because I didn't have any extra fabric, I stuck the bag back in the washer to let it felt some more. After another 30 minutes, the bag finally shrunk down enough to fit my lining.

yay for having fabric in my stash that matched and using what I had on hand!

I followed the directions on the Noni site for adding more reinforcements to the bag (think giant plastic needlepoint canvas). Then I added the handles and sewed in the lining.

I've been procrastinating posting this project because I wanted to find the perfect flower for the bag, but, as you can see, that didn't happen. I think I'll eventually make a fabric flower using this flower tutorial, but for now I'm calling the bag finished. This is going to be a new project bag for new knitting projects that I start.

Pattern: Medium Sized Carpet Bag by Noni

Yarn: Paton's Merino, doubled

Needles: Size 11

Ravelry link: craftr's Carpet Bag

It was fun to try out this felting pattern, but I don't think I'm going to become addicted to felting just quite yet. It's a bummer to lose stitch definition due to felted fabric, so it's hard to want to spend a lot of time knitting something that is just going to be felted.  I do have two more smaller felting projects that I'd like to try, though: Felted Ballerina Slippers and the French Press Slippers.