Just felt it

Back in my early knitting days, I felted a lot of things - bags, boxes, slippers, and whimsical objects like pumpkins... and a very colorful fish!

Felting knits was definitely a trend in the early-to-mid aughts. But I never felted my weaving. UNTIL NOW.

The Spring 2021 Yarnworker WAL is a project called Full On Coasters. Because I had yarn in stash, I decided to felt along. I used leftover Nature Spun Prairie DK (from the ruana project). These colors seemed to have enough contrast to work:

It took no time to warp up the Cricket with alternating colors.

I did a little sampling at the beginning, and then worked four colorwork patterns:

1. 3 picks lost lake (the darkest color), 1 pick misty mountain (the dusty teal)
2. 3 picks misty mountain, 1 pick lost lake
3. 1 pick misty mountain, 1 pick half and half (white)
4. 1 pick lost lake, 1 pick half and half

I didn't realize until later that I wasn't supposed to hemstitch both ends of each coaster, but that's what I did (just like I make towels) ... so this is what my piece looked like when it came off the loom. The sampling is at the bottom left corner of this photo:

This warp is only 8 or so inches wide, so these are little things. I cut them apart and threw them in the washing machine.

Here is how they looked when they came out:

I let them sit that way for about a week. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to cut them. But in the end, I did. It's kind of cool to be able to safely see the cross-section of the woven fabric:

You can see that the side edges of these coasters (the selvedge edges) did not always felt at the same rate as the ends where I worked the hemstitch. MY BAD. But I just cut all four sides until I had something squarish. 

Here they are after they're trimmed:

I definitely have a favorite design - it's the one on the bottom right, which was pattern #4: one pick lost lake, one pick half and half. It looks so delightfully tweedy!

I wouldn't mind making an entire set of these... but I don't have enough of the darkest color, lost lake, to do that. So for now, these will just be a fun experiment. I'm reminded that just like in felted knits, felting one's weaving hides a lot of weaving mistakes.