The Tote That Wouldn't Felt

I finished knitting my bag on Friday. YAY! I was unsure about the finishing because I honestly haven't done much. Reading all the different ways to join edges & such confused me so I decided to wait until knitting group Saturday night so I could get some help. Tatiana taught me to knit & she suggested crocheting the ends & the handels on. To be honest, she did it for me - who am I to complain? Most knitters hate the finishing work & I brought other projects so I let her. Well, we knit the handles on wrong, which really didn't matter before felting because it was really big & still hung kind of like a hobo bag & I liked that it was different. We had lots of new people at our group & everyone really wanted to see it felted so we decided to do it at her house. We did take "before" pictures but she has them so I'll post when I get them.

Felting...we followed the directions of the pattern for felting & left the bag alone. Oh the excitement! When time was up we looked at it and...it was BIGGER. Not smaller, people, bigger. When I held it up I could have worn it as a dress! So we tried again on a longer wash cycle with hotter water & actually threw in some of her son's jeans to help with aggitation. No cigar. STILL not felted. Ok, maybe a little, but really, just a little. We are girls that aren't afraid to experiment so we got out the iron. We steamed it under a washcloth & that worked some, but still not much. Bottom line is this...Tatiana has this really cool state-of-the-art gentle washing machine! (she's gonna be mad I wrote this). But everyone started coming in there & checking out the washer & we all agreed that we'd never seen such a machine. Gentle on & perfect for regular washing, bad for felting. It doesn't have an agitator! I put it in my old beat up washer & VOILA! Felted - too much. The finished measurements are 11x13 - so about a legal sheet of paper. Now the sideways handles matter. We've decided to cut them off & line the bag, but it will be a few weeks because I can't fool with it right now - I'm leaving for Vegas this Sunday & I have other things to do on my days off.

Current projects: I'm steadily working on my sweater. It's getting closer but it's so...boring. I finished up the yarn I had for Patrick's scarf thinking I was finished - he doesn't think it's long enough. UGH. Woolie Ewe doesn't have the same dye lot, so we'll see what happens.

I've seriously started looking at baby stuff because I have 2 baby gifts to make. It's so hard to decide because everything is SO cute. I also have some issues knitting clothes that I know they won't get much wear out of...I have a few things in mind so stay tuned for that!

I guess I get my gold medal. I just have to figure out how to put it on my blog...