A Design Adventure

I have officially burnt out 2 short of something I need. In case I have any cyber-stalkers, that is all that I am comfortable saying. I tried so hard to work on them yesterday, and it just did not happen. So I pulled out the bulky wool in my stash to see what I could do with it.

A couple months ago I worked a felted bag for a swap that required a hand-made item. I decided to go to Michaels and pick up some worsted weight wool. I absolutely love my Lilly Valley Bag design. Since I only recently re-discovered my camera (well more specifically re-discovered the ability to recharge the rechargeable batteries) here is a photograph of it!

Yes, I do have it stuffed with some wooly goodies to keep it standing up. But really that is only to battle that evil gravity. This felted beautifully into a solid durable fabric that I was able to sculpt into shape. That was the adventure for me in this one. I wanted to felt something down to a solid fabric with no stitch definition (something new for me) and then pull it into a useful shape.

As I'm sure you know, wool shrinks when it felts! This always made me a little nervous when it came to felting a bag down. I like to carry a lot around with me and tiny bags really don't do it for me. So I thought about the ability of felted material to stretch when sopping wet. With this bag in particular, I shoved a box into it before felting. The box fit a bit loosely. Perfect! I tossed this baby into the washing machine for a full cycle (didn't even think about checking it) pulled it out, dropped it into the sink and ran the water. This kept it nicely wet for me to pull it into shape over the box. I didn't end up losing very much interior space as a result.

So back to yesterday....I've had a vision of creating a bag with sections to hold my spindle separate from the rest of the goodies I compulsively carry (you know, like that lace project, those socks, sometimes a wallet). I decided to just CO and go! I knit and knit and knit in front of the TV yesterday and ended up with a tube of stockinette (along with one row of eyelets, because felted lace is something else on my list). I pulled out three 1 liter water bottles and carefully stitched between them to create 3 sections. Then I tossed it into the wash (I should start doing my whites when I'm felting) pulled it out, soaked it, and sculpted it.

I had to do quite a lot of pulling with this one. First to get the water bottles into the bag! Then I wanted to make sure the eyelets were open enough, but I couldn't just poke my fingers in. So I sort of pulled each one as far apart as I could. Here it is drying outside.