Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Felted Bags

I can’t believe how taken I am with felted bags. Well, I guess I can believe it since I’m always all about something. But I made this first bag on a lark to enter into the state fair, just because I wanted to be sure that we had entries. The state fair is our guild’s big push for public exposure to the fiber arts and I always seem to wait until the end to think about my entries and get them done.

But I love this bag, and I didn’t expect to. I have had surprising response to it – probably more than I’ve had to any knitted project. When both my daughter and daughter-in-law looked at it, I could tell they were hoping that this was in their Christmas future. Then my dental hygenist this week told me that she’d be interested in buying one from me. Holy cow! I’m still in the learning curve on how wool felts.


And learning, I am. That’s Yoda-speak for I’m still I still don’t understand how different wools felt. Amy and I were talking about my last venture which I found disapointing. She noted that sweaters when felted seem to stay wide but get shorter. My first bag was Romney and it seems to have felted evenly, but my last bag was Merino and seems to be wide and short. I added more rows and I expected that I would get a deeper bag,but I was guessing and I didn't guess enough rows. I think this calls for the dreaded swatch--no way out of it. Isn’t that what Sartre said?

3 comments:

:shazzy: said...

Your Dental hygenist is on to something, you could very well sell these in many places here in SF. People would go gaga over those, they are so well done. Especially the lovely brown and blue (your daughter and dauther in law are also on to sometheing, you could knock off a few on the gift list for Christmas, hee hee).

Birdsong said...

Sharon, I fell in love with felting too, last year - maybe it's the mad chemist aspect! Here's a link to the book with the best discussion about how things felt:
http://www.amazon.com/Felted-Knits-Beverly-Galeskas/dp/1931499330/sr=8-1/qid=1158946803/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2093206-7617510?ie=UTF8&s=books

I also have sold several purses I made and felted, mostly unsolicited orders, and just donated another to a fundraising auction my charter school is having this weekend. These would probably do well at the place you sell the hats, so I would give it a whirl if you want to knit more of them!

Beryl Moody said...

I think your bags are wonderful. I have found that different wools felt differently and you may find that even within a breed, the wool doesn't act exactly the same. It all makes for interesting pieces, doesn't it:-)