Felted! Bag!

I felted my crazy leftover colorwork bag, and I LOVE it!Finished dimensions: the round base is about 9” in diameter, and the bag is about 14” from base to top edge.  I forgot to measure it before felting so I’m not sure how much is shrunk (but it was a lot).

I’m totally psyched that I didn’t buy a single new ball of yarn for this project.

The bottom is knit from the outside in to the center.  I chose to use two colors and knit so that a spiral is formed.  You can see it more clearly in the pre-felting photo:I really like the way the bottom looked on the inside pre-felting, too: If I make another one, I might make those spiral rounds two stitches wide instead of just one, to make the finished effect more bold.  The sharp spiral blurs out a lot after felting:In fact, the stitch patterns that look best in the finished bag are the bolder ones (like the purple and gold one, and the wine and green one).  I’ll remember that next time. 

All in all, I’m very pleased.

Yesterday I “had” to go to The Mannings with a friend who is reacquainting herself with knitting.  Her grandmother taught her when she was a child, and she just had the urge to pick up the needles again.  She’s been practicing on a scarf-like piece and wanted to get yarn to knit a hat.  So, off we went.

This gave me the opportunity to acquire some yarn to make S1 a new pair of felted clogs.  The old ones are three years old and are wearing through.  Here are the colors I chose: The upper will be green, and the trim and sole will be purple.  And… I’m thinking of doing some whimsical embroidery on the green part, too.  Robots, perhaps?  We’ll see!

Cozy Blackberry / Blackberry Cozy

That certainly was a fast project!  I knitted and felted this on Tuesday.  I sewed the button on and embroidered it on Wednesday.  Done.

Here were some materials I pulled for inspiration.  Color by Kristin (by Kristin Nicholas), photos of an embellished felted bag by Kristin Nicholas that has been hanging in the studio for a while, and Elegant Stitches (a fabulous dictionary of embroidery stitches): Closeup:

And the stem wraps around the back:

I hope this is both pleasing and functional!

This and That

I’ve got a few projects in process right now.  One is a Blackberry cozy for a knitter with no time to knit.  I followed a really basic, free pattern in Ravelry and got this (I used Nature Spun worsted from stash): That’s my dummy Blackberry on the right, which I made by taping together layers of cardboard cut to the dimensions of the device.  I felted this last night and it came out the perfect size for the dummy.  Next I need to get a button on it and then embellish.  I’m planning to give it the Kristin Nicholas treatment, so expect more COLOR!

I also finished some spinning that has been languishing for far too long.  Yesterday I plied some singles that have been waiting for a while.  This is 287 yards of 2-ply wool/mohair (102 g).  Not quite sock weight.  It looks a lot like the other 4 oz of this roving that I spun, except perhaps not with as tight a twist.  I was trying to work my way closer to a woolen style of draft here.I mostly failed.  Maybe this isn’t the right fiber for long draw?  I remain stuck on worsted to semi-worsted spinning. Since I started spinning this, I got another whorl in the next smaller size.  I should be able to get thinner singles by using it, which would mean I’d get thinner yarn, which would mean I might approach a handspun sock yarn.  We shall see!