felting monster nightmare

tonight i undertook a new project. i decided to embark upon the journey of the felt.

"felting" means taking this:

and making it into this:



felting is when you knit a huge, lumpy, ugly project, and make it good. you take the big gelatinous mound of wool that you've churned out on super-sized needles, with double-stranded yarn, and you essentially put it through hell.

hot water and lots of whirring around is bad for wool. i spent three months on a pair of the finest-knit wool socks for israel for christmas, and it is my worst nightmare that they will wind up in the hot-water cycle of the washing machine, or just as bad, the dryer. they would there-after be fit only for a very funny-footed baby.

but when you do it on purpose, it's supposed to be magic. i rarely stumble upon a felting project i like the looks of. they usually look something like this:but i found this pattern recently and thought that felted slippers might just be the key to me braving the wide felting world. so over the past few days i knit up these ginormous lumps of wool--seriously, each "slipper" is the length of my thigh. (see above pictures.) they're made to be super-thick: you make not only one, but two soles and sew them together. and the pattern was a little complicated, with some interesting moves i hadn't tried before, and tons of counting stitches. but i made it through.

and tonight i set about felting them. i tossed 'em in the wash with a few old towels, set it to "hot," and let 'er rip. the first time through there was noticeable difference (but not enough for anyone but me to tell, since i've been spending so much time with those baggy things lately). but before the cold rinse set in, i had to yank 'em out and wait for the wash cycle to finish before trying again. in the meantime, i threw them in the dryer to see if it wouldn't speed up the process.

long story short, they're downstairs on their third break in the dryer while the fifth round of washing finishes draining. i'm hoping one more time will do it.

if i'm not too mad at them, i might post pictures later. and if they're as great as the internet knitting community says they are (seriously--they've been made 5,531 times by members of my favorite knitting site, ravelry.com), maybe i'll make myself a pair next!