One Pillow Down

I finished one of the two patchwork felted pillows on my UFO list. Here it is, front and back:





I also managed to photograph My Lord and Master wearing his new Viking Sweater, now complete with pewter clasps. Was I right, or was I right, that he looks really hot in it?





This (showing more accurate colors) is a shot of the Fair Isle knitting I did in the hem facing (a la EZ, but in Cyrillic). I put in the date, but instead of the actual random day I finished it, I put in tomorrow's date, which happens to be our 2-year anniversary. It occured to us that in two years of marriage I've knitted him precisely 2 sweaters. I now seem to have committed myself to knitting him a sweater every year. I'm already planning next year's - another Dutch Fisherman's Sweater, but this time I'm going to make it in a nice cream or tan color that shows the pattern easily, and in a softer yarn, and I'm going to do one with much more complicated stitch patterns, so I don't get bored, as I did last time. I'm actually looking forward to it, but I won't start until after UFO August and after I've started the new Fair Isle sweater for myself.

Two whole people (that I know of) have now taken up the gauntlet of my Knit-Geek Questionnaire - hurrah! Go read them: here's the Purloined Letter and Spectacled. And fill out your own!

Scissor Madness

I spent last night and this morning working on the felt.

My parents were told, when I was in kindergarten, that I was extraordinarily good with scissors for my age. I've always remembered this with pride, and considered it proof that I am a born crafter.

Last night I discovered that I was wounding myself with scissors. This would not be the first time. I think my skills and brainpower are devolving as time passes. Maybe grad school is making me dumb, and weak.

(this next part is slightly gross, so the seriously squeamish might want to skip ahead)
Yesterday morning I discovered the following small slice of skin off the knuckle on the second finger of my right hand. At first I thought I had accidently razor-bladed it when I was shaving the felt the night before. This would be very typical of me, though I did think it was odd that I hadn't noticed at the time.



But then after another evening spent in cutting up thick pieces of felt, I found an identical wound on the next knuckle, and another like it in the process of forming on the underside of the base of my thumb. I'm forming scissor calluses! And I thought carpel tunnel was the biggest thing I had to worry about with my fiber hobby.

Anyhoo. I made this mess of the bedroom, cutting pieces of felt into vaguely rectilinear shapes.



I also cut out pieces for a couple more handbags. Will photograph them later, when they're more impressive than they are now.

I'm well on my way to having the two big patchwork pillowcases which were the original goal, but in the process I couldn't resist whipping up this little back pillow, out of the grey sweater which I decided was too big around for a comfortable handbag:



I cut teeny holes every so often in the ribbing section, and threaded a ribbon through these for closure. I hate buttons on pillows.

While going through my sewing supply stash for the pieces of felt leftover from the last time I did this, I discovered that a random plastic bag I'd long assumed contained only my Salome Halloween costume from a few years ago actually contained this amazing blast from the past:



I'd thought my old cross-stitch projects had long since been lost in the several moves my stuff has undergone in the last decade or so, along with my candlewicked pillow case, the "Indian" beadwork bracelets, the heart-shaped basket, the original green knitted slippers with pom-poms, the pink popple I sewed all by myself, and various other products of my crafty childhood. Apparently not. I believe this is the complete collection of every cross-stitch project I worked, except for a series of bookmarks that I gave away to parents and grandparents. It even included the last, unfinished project - haven't the faintest what it was supposed to be when it was done, but I think it's funny that it's pink. The pink peace sign you see (in the upper right corner, if it's big enough to see) represents the only design I invented myself. I was a hippy girl. The really cool thing is that I also have my entire collection of embroidery floss. It's all tangled up in a ziploc bag, but otherwise in good shape, and there's a lot of it. Will have to think on what I can knit with it....any ideas?

More later about the pillow stuffing.

Viking Sweater Complete!

Inspired by UFO August, I spent the last three days finishing the Viking sweater (aka, the Gauge Disaster Sweater), at long last. I consider myself quite heroic for working on a wool sweater for three days solid in this heat, but (a) I was in the only room with AC the whole time and (b) it was better than working on the diss, which, alas, I've done very little of lately due to brain melt.



Here it is. In addition to the aforementioned gauge disaster, and then that little alien invasion issue (see below), I also had to frog and re-knit the upper third of the yoke in order to get the collar to lay right, and, after finishing the hem facings for the body and sleeves, I noticed while re-reading Knitter's Almanac that it's really good advice to make the facings in smaller-gauge yarn. Mine were a little poofy, especially on the sleeves, but - my god - the thought of still more frogging and re-knitting almost killed me. Especially on the body hem, where I had laboriously knitted in my husband's name and the date. So I compromised, by frogging the sleeve hem facings and the few rows of the collar that I had done at that point, and re-knitting them in laceweight yarn (with extra stitches to make up the width, of course). The body hem I left as it was, deciding that it had come out alright anyway the first time (much better than the cuffs). So, what I predicted would take only one full day away from the diss really took more like three, but that still doesn't totally ruin my immense pleasure in having this thing DONE.

I'm so grateful for the UFO August KAL. Hard as it is to resist temptation to start new things, I am getting such a HUGE kick out of unloading the guilt induced by all these UFO sweaters that have been haunting my closet for, in some cases, years. It started with the monumental Mom sweater, and it could have been so easy to just coast on that accomplishment right into starting that new 27-color Fair Isle project...but no! The KAL stepped in, and I'm here to finish what I've started until September! I really think that should be enough time to do most of them, and still finish my chapter, which is the other goal for the summer....

I've already started on the #2 UFO on my list: the sweaters I bought in Michigan, now felted and ready to be turned into handbags and pillow cases. I spent last night shaving them thoroughly (the fuzz and felt scraps? I'm going to use it for pillow stuffing! Inspired by Annemor Sundboe). The shaving made a huge difference in how they look. I also cut the pieces for four handbags, and started sewing one.

Here are the three that are cut and awaiting sewing:



And here's the one I've started on. I'm calling it "Mint Choc Chip" after my favorite flavor of ice cream, and plan to needle-felt a biggish choc-brown circle in the lower right quadrant of the bag after I'm done with the sewing and edging the handles.



(To Toni, the commenter who asked why I was felting the sweaters - this is why! The edges don't unravel after felting, so you can cut them up at will and sew them into new things.)

I'll post pictures of the Viking sweater modeled as soon as it's dry, but I can say already from when I tried it on him before blocking that it looks HOT (in more ways than one!)I know it looks like it would be incredibly unflattering, with this huge colorwork section right around the belly and plain and dark everywhere else - but Hubbster has broad shoulders and a very narrow waist, and it looks just awesome on him (IMHO! =] )

But it'll probably be two weeks before it dries, in this humidity. Here's a quote for the day:

"Dangerously hot and humid conditions will continue through early
this evening. An extremely hot airmass will remain in place
today... with temperatures climbing into the mid to upper 90s in
southern Westchester County to around 100 degrees in New York
City. With humidity remaining at oppressive levels... this will
result in maximum heat indices from 106 to 114 degrees during the
afternoon. Heat indices in New York City are not expected to fall
below 105 degrees until early this evening.[...] In addition to the dangerous heat... air quality levels of outdoor air are predicted to be greater than an air quality index value
of 100 for fine particles."

Arrivals

All on the same day, I received the new Interweave Knits, and (my Amazon Bonus Points purchase) Meg Swansen's Gathering of Lace and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Spinning in the Old Way. It's been fun around here.

I'm also trying to finish the brown Fair Isle sweater (but showing no blog-worthy progress yet) and trying to work on the diss, but this weather is making both a chore. Blaech.

The good news is, there's a new KAL: UFO August. Just the exorcism I was calling for!

In place of knitting, here's a random picture:

Drilling and Yarn

What could a power drill have to do with knitting? It's actually very simple...

My friend Ruth had a brilliant idea one day last year, in the Izmailovskii market in Moscow. They were selling blank wooden Matryoshka dolls - the nesting kind - so you could paint them yourself. We each bought a set, but Ruth's brilliant idea was to drill a hole in them and use the bigger two as yarn feeders. So, that's what I'm up to. I drilled the holes (one on top, for center-pull balls, one on the side for the other kind), and sanded them, and now they're resting until Hubbster feels like varnishing them for me (I don't dare do it myself because strong fumes give me migraines, and we don't have a yard to do this in or anything). Here's what they look like so far:



And I still have 5 nesting dolls to paint!

Frustration

And now: The Most Frustrating Evening of Knitting Ever (or, Never Frog from the CO Edge Up)



These two sleeves are not identical. Can you spot the Problem Row? (Click on the picture to see a bigger version)

Okay. So, there's this brown Fair Isle sweater with a gauge problem (scroll down to the bottom of the post). I had one sleeve, the bottom third of the second sleeve, and the body done. The gauge was all mis-matched in the main color parts, but the Fair Isle parts were fine, and after blocking and becoming enamored of the Fair Isle in the body, I *really* did want to rip any of that out (I was also slightly afraid that doing so would create a gauge problem there, too). So, I decided to frog the top few inches of the body, and the top and bottom few inches of the second sleeve. If I could re-knit this in the gauge I was originally getting to match the bottom of the body and the first sleeve, all would be well.

Since I had no idea what got my gauge off in the first place, I had to take a couple weeks off, working on other projects before I could deal with this.

So, two days ago, I frogged the top part of the second sleeve. I re-knit, up to where I'd stopped, and beyond, all the way to the top of the sleeve. Huzzah! - no problems. It knit up just as it should. The secret, I believe, is to NOT THINK ABOUT KNITTING WHILE KNITTING. This seems to keep my gauge right on track. I recommend watching Sopranos re-runs as the best way to achieve this Zen-like state.

So, all proud of myself and convinced that the Bad Knitting Voodoo had vanished, I set out to frog the bottom couple of inches of the sleeve, which had been too tight. I had started with a provisional cast-on, so I didn't even have to laboriously pick apart the edge.

Now, I know that when you start knitting down from the bottom edge of a piece, you're really knitting the loops *between* the loops you were knitting upwards before, so that you end up with once less loop, and so a careful eye will spot a slight difference at the start of the row/round.

I had full confidence that I could handle this. I've read Montse Stanley cover to cover - I can do anything.

I planned to rip only to the last row in the main color, so that the switch wouldn't affect any of the Fair Isle section, and I didn't particularly care if the round join looked a little odd, since it's the underside of a sleeve. I started ripping, and...something strange happened. The loops all obediently popped right out of their places until I got to the beginning of the round, and then I found that the loose end of the yarn went right *through* the loop, instead of being looped through, if you know what I mean. It was a knot, not a loop. Like the last loop on a bind-off, when you put the end through by itself to secure the last loop. Except it wasn't a bind-off row. As far as I understand knitting, it ain't got no business having a knot (that is, anything but a loop inside a loop) anywhere but the first or last stitch. And it's not like this even happened just where I had made my M1 increases -- those were every 5th row, and I found this knot thing 2-3 times at the beginning of every round. Yes, 2 to 3 times. Sometimes it was 2, sometimes 3. This *really* makes no sense, since every row should be the same, at least.

I began to contemplate how the cuff bottom that I vaguely remember having knit myself in the usual way had, in fact, been knit by aliens in some weird alien way that makes no sense and is very bad for frogging. I ran this theory by my husband, who made sensitive, supportive noises.

So, I frogged each row by pulling the entire length of the unravelled yarn through those 2-3 loops at the beginning of every round. Normally, frogging a couple inches of cuff should take about 5 minutes, if not less. This took a good hour, and the closer I got to the Fair Isle section, the more the wool MC yarn started to stick to itself or catch little bits of the alpaca I'd used for the Fair Isle, so that it didn't want to rip out.

I had planned to frog for five minutes, get the needles into the last row of MC, ready to re-knit down those few inches, then take a break and have a shower before dinner, since I was sweating like a loon under all that wool and alpaca. Suddenly, Hubbster was saying (gently, so as not to provoke) that dinner was kind of ready already, and I was sitting there with a huge, knotty pile of kinked wool all over me, and only half the cuff frogged. I found myself unable to pull words together to respond to Hubbster. I could only make noises, and gesture.

Hubbster is a very clever boy, and offered me beer. Not regular beer, which I despise, but green-apple flavored imported Belgian beer, which is something else entirely. A drink. This one thought penetrated my flummoxed, wooly brain and I flung away the whole mess and drank my beer. Also ate, and did all the other necessary things, so I could return to my cuff with renewed energies. Hubbster asked, conversationally, over dinner, as if this was something normal people discussed, what had gone wrong with the knitting. I explained my alien theory. I worked myself up into believing that if I could just get to that last row of the MC and pick up the loops (the loops between loops, I remembered, because I'm so clever), then all would be well.

I went back to frogging, but all of a sudden, for reasons I am completely unable to explain, the last MC row was already more than half gone, and I had a big fuzzy knot that included both the wool MC and the alpaca CC, and the knitting that remained still in place was totally unrecognizable as knitting. I would have taken a picture of this for you, if I hadn't been completely hysterical.

This is when I started to laugh and cry maniacally, and to grab my scissors and start hacking at random. This is when Hubbster started like a frightened deer and hovered nearby, ready to help but making sure not to get too close to the scissors.

I hacked off the MC yarn -- in the process making all that laborious frogging a complete waste of time, since I could have just snipped the yarn at that point in the first place. In the emotional state I was in by this time, this was enough to make me weep. Now I was left with the first Fair Isle row instead of a plain row to pick up. It was a simple one, just one-by-one stitch in the MC and CC. But the stranding, being so short, was indistinguishable from the loops, and here I was trying to find "loops between loops"! I tried several times, and each time the expletives got louder, and more sacreligious.

Okay, so I wasn't thinking all that clearly. But finally it did sink in - trying to pick up stitches in this row was probably REALLY STUPID. That maybe trying to pick them up in the next row, which was plain CC, would be easier. It was. I picked them up, I knitted down. Miraculously, my gauge when I knit down was fine. The row where I picked up is a bit tight, and of course the frame-shift caused by picking up the bottoms of loops and knitting in the opposite direction is much more noticeable this way than it would have been if I'd managed to do it in a plain MC row. And yes, I'm well aware that it would have been MUCH easier to have just ripped out the whole second sleeve and started from scratch, since we're only talking about a few inches of knitting here. But pray keep in mind that, having decided I want to keep the Fair Isle bit and blithely believing that frogging from the CO edge wouldn't be any harder than frogging from the top, I had already frogged the top part and re-knit the entire top of the sleeve. In the right gauge. If I tried it a third time, clearly, the gauge would have gone back to Bizarro-world gauge again. Everybody knows that's how the Knitting Voodoo works; you can't mess with it.

So I showed the sleeves to Hubbster, the intended recipient of the sweater, and asked him if he could see the difference. Not that he really had a choice at this point, but he claims in all honesty to be completely oblivious to even the slightest imperfection in the sleeves, or indeed in any of my knitting. Nice Hubbster. He grew up with the sort of grandmother who never, ever swore except while knitting, at which point she sometimes became quite colorful, as I'm sure we can all imagine. So he's well-trained.

Last night I frogged the top part of the body -- no alien invasions here -- and am now re-knitting it, apparently at the correct gauge.

Clearly, the Sweater Gods have had it in for me lately. Equally clearly, the Sweater Gods were called in for vengeance on behalf of the two unfinished sweaters sitting in my closet for about a year and a half now. I let too many sweaters sit in the closet for too long, and now they're ganging up on me. Maybe I've read too much Harlot, but I fear my own knitting. Honestly, I've never seen anything like that frogged cuff, I don't understand it, and I think Other Powers have to have been at work.

The smart thing to do, here, would be to finish those last two sweaters in the closet before I start the new, really exciting one using the KnitPicks Palette Sampler. But I'm afraid, so afraid. Plus, I stuck them in the closet in the first place because they didn't seem to be quite living up to their potential. Does anybody know any sweater exorcisms??

Next post: I use a power drill. And yes, it's related to knitting. Muhahahaha.

Seriously Good Luck

TANGENT RELATING TO THE PREVIOUS TANGENT:

Before I get into the felted sweaters, I just want to say...wow.

Our internet connection was down yesterday, and when I went online today to see how/if anyone responded to my post of yesterday, I was amazed at the quantity, depth, and sheer wonderfulness of the responses! See, now this is what I love about the confluence of knitting and the internet! Everyone added so many more reasons that the Mason-Dixon book is so compelling, each of which had me going, "yes! exactly! that's it, too!" -- it just goes to show how powerful an effect the book has, or how powerful a niche it's filling. And I want to thank everyone for adding so much more to satisfy my own curiosity about why the book and its projects attract me so much.

As I said in the original post, that was really what I was most going after (i.e., understanding what it is about warshrags, etc, that have suddenly taken over my brain and my fingers, to my own surprise!), so I hope I didn't start or dig up a controversy where there wasn't one. I only saw a couple of posts on blogs (and I honestly don't remember where) that expressed disappointment or scepticism about the book -- which I'm sure appears on blogs somewhere about *every* book that gets published -- and which I thought was interesting only because, while I totally understood what these people found to complain about (the simplicity of the patterns, etc), YET, I loved the book, and bought it happily with no regrets, even though I'm on a strict knitting-book budget. That's what I was trying to figure out, and, with the help of all these good folks who posted, I do feel like we've nailed down a lot of the ways in which this book is much more than the sum of its parts. I hope that convinces a few people to try it who haven't yet. That's why the handful of comments I got about my Absorba the day before prompted me to write the post. Those weren't people who had issues with the M-D book, but they did say they were hesitating, or half-convinced, and I guess I just wanted to find a way to convey to them and others still thinking about getting the book, or doing a particular project in it, what it is that's just so *satisfying* about it.

That said, one of the not-so-enthusiastic blog posts that I remember seeing a while ago was complaining (mildly) about the book, about KALs in general to some degree (mentioning also the Icarus KAL, of which I'm a member too), and was saying that it was annoying for everyone to always be on the same bandwagon. Now, this was just that person's opinion and wasn't at all expressed in an offensive way (I don't see how one person's opinion can be offensive, anyway), so I don't want to go looking for that blog again just to point it out as if it's a bad example of something. It just intrigued me, because I, too, dislike doing what everybody else is doing, or wearing whatever everybody else is wearing, and I too thought, when I first browsed M-D, "well, but that pattern's just from the ball band, and that I could do myself....", etc. But, unlike this other person, I LOVE knit-a-longs, I was delighted to have so much company in making the Icarus, and I found myself unable to resist buying M-D (indeed, the quality of the photography and editing and writing helped here - I started by reading the intro in the bookstore, and I think that sold me, patterns be damned), and of course have since become a total convert to all the projects from the book, and the blog.

So, what about this bandwagon thing? This anonymous blog poster, again, expressed annoyance that "everyone else" was knitting Icarus, and said that she wouldn't do it now, even though she'd liked the pattern and had wanted to knit it when she first saw it. Now, okay, I have to say that I think it's totally insane not to do something you want to do, just because other people like it too. [And, though it may indeed seem in the knitting blagosphere that "everyone" is knitting Icarus, I live in NYC and have yet to see a single other Icarus walking down the street! Not even a Clapotis, or a Jaywalker! :-) ] But -- does anyone else have maybe a slightly less pointed reaction to the overwhelming popularity of certain patterns in the internet knitting world? I'm wondering if a sort of backlash to the knitting trend is starting to turn up? I would absolutely hate to think so, because even though the really chic-chic, Hollywood-y aspects of the knitting-as-yoga trend do make me occasionally roll my eyes, I could not be more delighted or grateful to have perhaps a handful of mere trend-followers to join us hordes of die-hard knitters. Whatever it takes to keep the LYS's in business, and the pattern books coming!! I'm perfectly happy to be slightly discomforted by a visit to a certain extremely uppity "luxury yarn" store on the Upper East Side if it means I can get my alpaca-silk when I want it!

So ever since the trend started, I've been living in shivering, quivering fear of the moment when a backlash will set in, knitting will go out again, and we'll have to knit our kitchen cotton because we have no selection of other, fuzzier fibers available, rather than because we feel like it. But, upon reflection, and upon seeing the response to my post yesterday, I'm going to bravely claim that I don't think knitting will ever go back into hibernation as it once was! Indeed, I think that life today necessitates something like knitting, or yoga, or sculpting, or quilting, or model building, or ANYTHING that serves to keep one in touch with one's body, one's imagination, and the outside world. And I think the internet has a key role in all this. Spending most of our time sitting in front of computers is probably part of why we all need the knitting therapy so desperately, but at the same time, the community-building power of the internet makes it possible, for the first time, for no knitter to have to work out a pattern alone (or abandon it in despair), for no knitter to have to teach himself every skill from scratch, for no knitter to have to hide her knitting lest people think her all kinds of things she isn't, and for no knitter to suffer from the inability to find or make a pattern to express *exactly* his own personality....and so, dear ones, it seems to me that there is no longer any reason for a knitter (who can get internet access, that is, usually free at public libraries!) to run into the kind of situation that so commonly used to cause those infamous "knitting lapses" (mine lasted for years, during the Red Heart Era).

It was you, dear commenters, who have brought me to this hopeful perspective, and I thank you. You have also served to explain why I love knit-a-longs all of a sudden, even though I've always been one of those ornery, non-joining type people. While I grudge no knitter or blogger the right to be annoyed or to post a gripe, I'm so glad that to an overwhelming degree, the browsing of knitting blogs never fails to make me feel inspired, interested, humbled, and motivated.

Oh, and yes, if I could be writing my disseration about knitting...well. I would be a lot closer to being done now, wouldn't I? :-) Ah - the good thing about being a historian, though, is that *everything* becomes history as soon as it happens so, who knows, maybe someday I'll get to write a book about the Great Knitting Revivial of the Early 21st Century. Meanwhile, I take comfort in re-reading my sources for my diss and catching occasional references to knitting there. I'm even contemplating, yes indeedy, working up these small references into an article someday.

BUT - Back to knitting. Er, no, actually, I still don't have any knitting pictures to post, but I do want to tell a felting story. It's a good one, with a happy ending.

HEREWITH, THE FELTING:

So while Hubbster and I were in Michigan, visiting Mom, we went shopping one day at the nearby outlet mall, looking principally at an antique store, where I was hoping to find some old knitting equipment of any kind. No luck there, but we did find a consignment store further on that was offering everything in stock for $2 per item. And guess what, folks - I found no less than 7 gorgeous feltable sweaters:



Some were so beautiful I was almost ashamed to felt them. One is Abercrombie & Fitch, another is DKNY. Two are 100% Shetland wool, and four are 100% lambswool (the seventh is 100% Scratchy Wool, and no, that's not what it said on the tag, but I'll bet it's why it was for sale). I love the lime-green hoodie with the cute cable pattern and the kangeroo pocket. Crying out to be made into a handbag, n'est pas?

I took out all the tags and also several of the seams in the hoodie, since that one's quite bulky and I didn't want to waste the fabric in the seams by letting it felt into a big fat wormlike shape. Here it is, undone, looking a lot like a really accurate schematic:



The DKNY sweater is really interesting, too. It's plain stockinette, but knit side-to-side, with some shaping around the neck and the sleeve decreases going down the top of the arm. I was really tempted to just wear it as-is, but it's pilling pretty badly and a bad color for me, so I decided to felt it after all. I might want to replicate the pattern someday, though, so I took some detail shots of the shaping. Here's a couple of samples:





And in case anyone wants to copy those cables from the hoodie, like I do, here's a detail shot of that:



So, I went to the Laundromat to start felting, and after three cycles (at $1.75 each), I decided to give up temporarily and finish the felting at home, by hand. They all at least started to felt, the blue Fair Isle one felted completely and the Fair Isle parts of two others got close. But I just couldn't stand to sit in the humid Laundromat paying that much for a 10-minute wash cycle anymore. What I wouldn't give to own my own washing machine!

So, back at the farm (er, the 1BR apartment), I dumped the 6 sweaters in varying stages of unfeltedness into a big plastic tub in the bathtub. I added lots of soap and hot water, got out a big wooden spoon and a book, and whacked, swirled and smooshed away at the sweaters for a couple hours while reading. Then, I pulled each one out, squeezed out excess water, and took a look at my handiwork: two hours of rather laborious work had yielded...nothing. Hmph. Time to get out the heavy artillery. The metal cooling rack (the kind you use when baking cookies). I ruthlessly put all my sweaters "on the rack," alternately rubbing them by hand, or laying them across the rack and rubbing at it with the wooden spoon. One piece (half of the hood from the hoodie) felted pretty nicely this way, but it took forever, and by the time I'd gotten that far I was out of all patience, it was past midnight, and Hubbster was beginning to wonder what evil spirit had possessed his wife (and whether she remembered that she's getting a PhD in history, not felting). So I dumped the sweaters back in their soapy tub and left them there to feel guilty while I slept.

Next day, I decided that shock therapy would be the ticket (and, a lot less work). I poured out the old water, filled it with the hottest-of-hot, almost-boiling water from the tap and more soap, took out a little bit of my pique with the wooden spoon, and stalked off to see how it liked this treatment. I re-visited the tub whenever the water had cooled, drained it, and "shocked" the wool with more hot. Apparently, though, this wool was pretty unshockable. Throughout the process, it displayed a uniformly English attitude of restraint and imperturbability in the face of anything I threw at it. Must be because there was Shetland in there.

After two days of this, Hubbster was beginning to laugh at me, and to tell jokes about my undisciplined sweaters to all and sundry.

So, pulling the tatters of my dignity along like Linus' blankie, I gave up and dragged the sweaters, in their tub, down to the basement. Let them be half-felted handbags. Like I care. I'll sew them together with yarn that really does felt, and it'll all be fine. I planned it like that the whole time. And damn if I was going to waste any more energy wringing them dry and then laying them all out on towels to take up the next week to fully dry in this weather. So, I threw them all in the dryer, and put in enough quarters for an hour and fifteen minutes. That outta do it.

So, 75 minutes later down I go to pick them up, firmly convinced that the tags had all lied, that they'd all been stranded with super-wash or nylon or something, and....I took out from the dryer six teeny, tiny, heavily felted, very thick sweaters.

So, in other words, I've invented a new, highly efficient, and cheaper means of public-laundry felting. Dunk your stuff in soapy water till they're full, then stick 'em in the dryer. End of story. The beauty of it is that while $1.25 to $3.00 will get you only about 10 minutes of actual heated, agitated, washing time in a public machine (the rest being rinses and spins), every minute you pay for in a dryer is actually heating and agitating the sweaters. If only I had thought of this from the beginning! Best to keep them each in their separate, zippered pillowcases, though, as you would in a washer, because otherwise the fuzzies will all stick to all sweaters equally (one arm of my grey sweater escaped its confines).



(Grey fuzz on purple-and-red sweater.)

The punchline is....none of the sweaters were actually dry.

They're now hanging on the drying rack in my living room, where they've been for 24 hours, with no sense of dryness yet showing itself. I'll give it a week, or maybe until fall?



Here's a shot, though, of the felted sweaters, minus the very obedient blue Fair Isle one that felted right from the start, and is already dry, which paid for its obedience by being totally forgotten when picture-taking time came.



Both the grey and sideways-green ones were big enough for me to wear before felting. The grey one looks only slightly smaller now, though noticeably shorter, but the green one is miniscule. A good illustration of how much more stockinette stitch felts vertically, than horizontally.



Didn't the cables come out looking really cute?

So, they weren't exactly the incredible bargains I told Hubbster they were, after all those washer and dryer cycles, but I've now actually got the results I originally wanted. Will keep you updated on what I do with the sweaters after they dry. Right now, I'm planning to make at least a few handbags, a la those in Leigh Radford's AlterKnits, and cut up the rest, along with some felted bits and pieces from a previous run to Goodwill to make a couple of big pillow covers. And maybe another handbag. Or two.

Saving for a future post: the Most Frustrating Evening of Knitting Ever (or, Never Frog from the CO Edge Up) and Knitting and Drills.