May 1, 2009

Felted Basket Flu


The felted basket is done, and I think its lovely. I wasn't sure how this thick-n-thin homespun style yarn would felt up, but as you can see in the photo above, the felted yarn almost looks pebbled and it felted up nicely.

I wasn't paying much attention to the pattern as I was knitting away on last Sunday's drive. I kept thinking, "Wow, this thing is getting really big. I could steek in armholes and give it sleeves." When I finally measured, I think it had 22" of stockinette. And too much orange. So I frogged back 6" or more, switched colorways and payed attention to the pattern. I did use fewer stitches to form the handles, just under a 1/5 of the total stitch count per handle instead of 1/4, and that worked out just fine.

I have a front loading washing machine and I wasn't sure how well it would work for felting, but what the heck, what could go wrong, really? I actually felted it once and blocked it, but then decided it I wanted the felting tighter so I ran it through again. The spin cycle causes a little more felting, but really gets the extra water out and the blocking dries fast. The first time I felted the basket, I block it over a soup pot, but the pot had handles that were in the way so I didn't get the shape I wanted. After the second wash and spin cycle, I blocked the basket over a small waste can that was the perfect diameter.



Finished size; 8 1/4" tall, 10" across.
I have over 100 grams of yarn left, so I could have made this a little bigger, or used only 3 skeins of this yarn for this project.


This week finds me mostly curled up on the couch, doing some knitting and some sleeping while I recover from this cold, or flu or whatever it is. I have a little sore throat, a cough, and a strong desire to take a nap. Yesterday I took three naps, which probably hasn't happened since I was an infant, or maybe since my children were infants. (No, I'm pretty sure they didn't sleep that often.) But, I managed to stay awake long enough to finish knitting the felted basket and then felting it, too.

1 comment:

  1. This has worked out really well. Well worth the effort - you should be very pleased with it.

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