How I Feel When I Felt

I haven't really been knitting for all that long (2 years in mid-April). But, like everything else that I do, I started with something simple, and then wanted to know EVERYTHING. Now. New technique? Tell me. Now. Something that's probably too difficult for someone with my limited skills? I don't care. I'm totally giving it a shot. It's just yarn. I can pull it out if it's terrible.

Not so with felting. Once it's felted, it's done. Good, bad, ugly, or totally unusable. I was warned. So far, things have worked out.

I went to my first fiber arts festival in September 2005. It was the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. They served lamb at the food booth, which seemed ironic. I was overwhelmed by all the stuff. The colors! The yarn! I love knitting! I can knit everyone a Christmas gift! It was totally overwhelming. It would have been even more so if I were a spinner or a weaver, but I'm neither of those things...yet. (We know it's only a matter of time.)

There were lots of things I'd never seen before. Mostly, though, I was attracted to a booth with some very brightly covered roving. That's unspun yarn, for those of you who are reading because I'm your friend (and not because you knit). She had orange, and bright green, and five shades of brown. (But I love brown! I need brown roving!) Alas, I don't spin, so I figured there was nothing I could do with colored fluffy balls of wool. Then the owner said, "Well, I think you can knit with roving. You should be able to knit with it, then felt what you make."

I had to ask what "felt" meant...as a verb.

But then, it seemed like a challenge. She had never done it, but assumed it could be done. She had no idea how much roving it would take to make a bag, but I was clearly a sucker -- had she said 17 pounds, I really would have believed her. But a challenge? I love me a good challenge. (See also: mathematics, grad school, marathons)

Knitting with roving is, I can attest, possible, but not easy. It's not yarn. It does fall apart while you're working. You can't go quickly. And you can't go back and pull stuff out. Over my winter break, I sat in the basement and made a GIANT bag, which shrunk to a reasonably sized bag when I put it in the washing machine. I wasn't nervous, since I knew from the beginning it might not work...I just thought it was a fun first project (for felting).



"They" suggest that you throw a pair of jeans in with your object, to aid in agitation. In hot water. Jeans. Obviously this suggestion was made by a short person who didn't care about shrinkage. I think I used tennis balls. The bag smells vaguely rubbery, but my pants are the right length.

I liked it. Felting was fun. There was just enough of the not knowing what was going to happen to keep me on my toes. Plus, we had this old, apartment-style toploader so I didn't worry about breaking it.

My next project was a more serious undertaking. While at OFFF, I picked up some KidMo mohair from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts folks, and a pattern for their shibori felted bubble scarf. The short of it is that I knit (and knit and knit and knit) a plain scarf, then, I put in the "bubbles" using 250 wooden balls and rubber bands. I threw the whole thing in the washing machine on hot (with some jeans I got at the Goodwill), then removed all the balls. Awesome.





And it's a good thing, too, because those wooden balls cost about $30, and I would have been really pissed if it didn't work.

The long of it is that the knitting was pretty dull, it took 5 hours to put the balls in, and 3 hours to take them out. Would I do it again? Absolutely. If I got paid. In chocolate and yarn.

I get a lot of comments on this scarf. People come up and pet it in the grocery store, and ask how I did it. The guy who owns one of our local breakfast joints (and who is almost always high) stared at it for a good five minutes before asking me if I wanted hash browns. At a meeting one time, a woman came up to me and said, "I love your shibori scarf." Then she asked if she could touch it.

And that was it for felting for a long time. Everyone at the knit shop was making felted clogs and hats. I have great slippers already, and a big head. Plus, I'd done it. It wasn't a big deal. Challenge met. Let's move on. There's got to be some intarsia somewhere for me to do.

This past December, my sister asked me to make a cow hat for a friend of hers, and it seemed like something I could do. I mean, why not?



I found a pattern for one for a child, Bessie, by Pick Up Sticks, and figured I could size it up for an adult. Of course, this was guess work. Science? That only goes so far here, since the pattern didn't include a pre-felting gauge, and since I had no idea how big her friend's head was. Plus also, all washing machines are different. AND we'd traded in* the old toploader that came with the house for a front loader...one that I'm not willing to break with yarn fluff. (Also, for my non-knitting friends, front loaders agitate less, so felting takes forever if it happens at all.) That means one thing: laundromat, where they're not so keen on me breaking their washers with wool fluff either.

This hat? It was a total pain to knit. The pattern was written upside-down and backwards. Yes, about 10 rows from the end I figured out that I could turn the pattern chart over and it would read normally. Shut up. There were 5000 ends to sew in. I had no idea how big to make it. As you can see from the photo above, it was pretty big. I have a 24 inch cranium.

I was really anxious at the laundromat. I found a toploader behind a big plastic plant, and hid there, and checked every 5 minutes on the progress of the hat (and the 10 sweaters I was felting at the same time. If you're gonna break one washer, why not break three?). I got a few hairy eyeballs from the owner, and she even asked why I was standing there with a ruler. (Sputter sputter. Measuring things. Appear crazy. Look crazy...uuuuhhhhh.) And when I got home, John said, "That's still too big." So, I cautiously put it in our washer, with the Goodwill jeans.

Behold. Bessie the Cow Hat in her natural habitat.




Anxiety. Check. Pissed off laundromat owner. Probably Check. Satisfied? Check.

* by which I mean, purchased.