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Jul. 10th, 2005 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickOn the felting project, which is actually a fulling project, it's done now. Technically, this is a fulling project but I said felting because normal people do not have any meaning to put to fulling. Just so you know, felting is what happens to loose, unworked wool that is put through a hot-water-and-agitation treatment while fulling is when one makes a fabric first and THEN applies the hot-water-and-agitation treatment to the fabric in order to shrink it up. (Yeah, I did say that last time I talked about this, but it's been a while and I'm not entirely sure everyone was paying attention back then. You, there, in the back! I'm talking to you. Put that book away unless you brought enough for everyone.)
This project came about because of coveting. I know it's one of the Thou shalt not items on God's How Not To Be Seen list or whatever, but I find covetousness a pretty damn useful motivational tool. See, on the internet, about a year ago, there were assorted pictures of really sexy felted market bags, things that just looked entirely too cool. I envied what I saw, mostly because it's difficult to covet what you don't know exists, and I decided (like I did with the nekkid French rugby players) that this was the sort of thing I needed to have.
There are, on the internet, free patterns for making neat felted bags of the sort I saw pictures of. I didn't use one of those. There were also instructions for determining the ratio (length and width) of shrinkage in a swatch of your own so that you could make something and know ahead of time how much shrinking it would do. I didn't use those instructions either, even though they would have been really cool and math-oriented. I *wanted* to do the math instructions. Honest, I did. They looked very cool. But this is me we're talking about. I'm not exactly little miss follows-directions. I did a swatch and fulled it. I didn't measure it before or after the fulling, mostly because at that point I was fully into the project in that running-downhill-too-rapidly way of mine. I did eyeball it before and after the fulling and I figured I knew enough about what was going to happen to proceed, so I did. (If I got burned more often with, y'know, having the pell-mell proceeding thing fucking NOT WORK and/or blow up in my face, I'd probably learn some caution and appreciate proper prior planning as much as it deserves to be appreciated. However, I lead a fairly charmed life on that front. I also find convenient parking places whenever I want them. Somewhere, there is a good person who has absolutely shitty karma. I figure it's some kind of accounting mix-up.)
The yarn I used for the project was Cascade 220, a brand of wool yarn. (At this point the only person nodding out there in reader-land is probably![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
not_your_real, but if the rest of youse happened to go into a fairly upscale yarn store (not, for example, Wal Mart), you would be able to see Cascade 220 there on the shelves.) Wool is a good material for shrinking up under the dual influences of hot water and agitation. It's know for doing so, particularly to people who didn't realize that their sweater was wool until after they washed it down to Barbie size. The reason I picked Cascade 220 for the project was that I'd read up on the internet about what brands of yarn would felt nicely, made a list, and proceeded to my local yarn store (there's one on the way to Altoona, about forty minutes away) so that I could buy what was available from the list I'd made. Nothing like a little planning ahead, is there? I should do it more often.
The yarn store had an el-cheapo odd lot bin which contained a few colors (hideous colors) of Cascade 220 that were really inexpensive due to being the last of a dye lot for each color. (People doing real on-purpose, un-half-vast projects like having all their yarn from one dye lot so that they don't have two different shades of Cornflower in their fucking cardigans. This is why leftover single balls in a dye lot are cheap.) Since Cascade 220 was on my list of acceptable yarns, I bought three skeins. Skeins are what you get at fairly ritzy yarn stores. They look like this. For reasons I am not apprised of, after paying an arm and a leg for your ritzy yarn, you have to go home, undo the skein, and gently wind the fucking yarn up into balls so that you can use it. (Putting too much tension on the yarn is not good for it, so you have to wind gently.) Personally, I think this is dumb as shit, but all the really snazzy yarn is sold in skeins so I can either buy cheap shitty center-pull acrylic from Wal-Mart or I can get used to the whole fucking skein thing. I swear the skein thing is an evil plan on the part of the people who sell center-pull ball-winder gadgets. I am not buying a ball-winder gadget out of sheer spite. Yes, that DOES make me happy.
I used size six needles, I think. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they were fives. They're smaller than you're supposed to use on Cascade 220 but I knit sort of funny and the swatch I did with size eights didn't look right at all after I fulled it. I hated it. It had holes in it and I could see daylight through it. I went back to the drawing board, used smaller needles, and made a dense, impermeable fabric that looked great when I fulled the swatch. In a different world, I took notes on what size needles I used. In this world, I used what made me happy and I don't remember what that was now. Possibly sixes, maybe fives. (If you're going to try to replicate what I did, you've got more problems than just what size needles to use, because the instructions go downhill from here anyway. Just do whatever you want or think will work. It'll be okay. It is when I do that, anyway.)
The skeins that I got were three, and three was their number. One was about the color of grape KoolAid, one was kelly green, and one was a relatively inoffensive medium blue. You'd think that they'd suck together. Hell, I thought they'd suck together, and I bought them. We'd both be dead wrong on that front. They look kind of appealing, felted together. It's weird. Pick colors you like. I did three colors because that was what was in the cheap bin. If you want more colors or fewer colors, well hell, I'm not stopping you.
I looked at instructions for creating bags, at patterns written by other people. They were nice, I'm sure, and they would have worked, probably. I don't know for sure because that's not what I did. I kind of did my own thing, which should surprise none of you. I made a circle on circular needles, a little bigger than I wanted the bag to actually be, a size that I guesstimated from looking at the swatch, and I knitted (in the different colors) until it was almost deep enough and then I did paired decreases at the corners (or what I decided would BE the corners, and I did count to make sure that they were evenly spaced) until I was tired of doing that and it looked about right whereupon I kitchenered the raw edges together to make the bottom of the bag. And then I made handles, about yay wide, picking up the stitches around the top edge of the bag. I knitted them about so long, which I judged by ye olde eyeballing, and then I attached them to the bag where I about thought they should go.
Anyway, with the thing knitted, I tucked in the loose ends and threw it in the washing machine with some jeans on HOT (I usually wash everything on warm, but fulling works better on HOT, a factoid I know from both the swatching part of the program and from internet research). Since I knew from the swatching thing that it would take two trips through the wash to be done, I did another load of jeans with the proto-bag in there, whereupon I took it out, subjected it to appropriate Christmas-morning sounds of oohing and aahing, and hung it up to dry.
Since you've waded through mountains of prose on a vaguely-technical subject that is of little interest to you, you deserve some pictures as a reward.
Here is a picture of the bottom of the bag, turned up so that you can see it. It's structurally the most interesting part of the bag because the rest of the bag is a featureless tube of stockinette. There are paired decreases on each side, sort of vaguely-visible diagonal lines. Pretend you can see them, okay?
Here is a picture of the bag in profile. There's a tape measure there for scale. The colors are sort of washed out due to the strong direct sunlight, but this was the only available flat surface for picture-taking. Sorry.
Here is a picture of the handles. They're in garter stitch so that they don't curl up. If I had these to do again, I might try some stockinette ones to see how they'd do curled up... or maybe garter to start with (so's to give a flat point-of-attachment) and then stockinette in the middle (to curl up for better tubular carrying surface). I'd probably also make them the same color next time, but I wanted them to be the same length so I did them on the same needle with two different colors of yarn because I can neither count nor measure and that was the next-best-way I could think of to have same-length handles.
I really wish that the internet had a touch-and-feel protocol. This fabric is so damn nifty... you're missing out on the way of it because I can't show it in pictures.
This project came about because of coveting. I know it's one of the Thou shalt not items on God's How Not To Be Seen list or whatever, but I find covetousness a pretty damn useful motivational tool. See, on the internet, about a year ago, there were assorted pictures of really sexy felted market bags, things that just looked entirely too cool. I envied what I saw, mostly because it's difficult to covet what you don't know exists, and I decided (like I did with the nekkid French rugby players) that this was the sort of thing I needed to have.
There are, on the internet, free patterns for making neat felted bags of the sort I saw pictures of. I didn't use one of those. There were also instructions for determining the ratio (length and width) of shrinkage in a swatch of your own so that you could make something and know ahead of time how much shrinking it would do. I didn't use those instructions either, even though they would have been really cool and math-oriented. I *wanted* to do the math instructions. Honest, I did. They looked very cool. But this is me we're talking about. I'm not exactly little miss follows-directions. I did a swatch and fulled it. I didn't measure it before or after the fulling, mostly because at that point I was fully into the project in that running-downhill-too-rapidly way of mine. I did eyeball it before and after the fulling and I figured I knew enough about what was going to happen to proceed, so I did. (If I got burned more often with, y'know, having the pell-mell proceeding thing fucking NOT WORK and/or blow up in my face, I'd probably learn some caution and appreciate proper prior planning as much as it deserves to be appreciated. However, I lead a fairly charmed life on that front. I also find convenient parking places whenever I want them. Somewhere, there is a good person who has absolutely shitty karma. I figure it's some kind of accounting mix-up.)
The yarn I used for the project was Cascade 220, a brand of wool yarn. (At this point the only person nodding out there in reader-land is probably
not_your_real, but if the rest of youse happened to go into a fairly upscale yarn store (not, for example, Wal Mart), you would be able to see Cascade 220 there on the shelves.) Wool is a good material for shrinking up under the dual influences of hot water and agitation. It's know for doing so, particularly to people who didn't realize that their sweater was wool until after they washed it down to Barbie size. The reason I picked Cascade 220 for the project was that I'd read up on the internet about what brands of yarn would felt nicely, made a list, and proceeded to my local yarn store (there's one on the way to Altoona, about forty minutes away) so that I could buy what was available from the list I'd made. Nothing like a little planning ahead, is there? I should do it more often.The yarn store had an el-cheapo odd lot bin which contained a few colors (hideous colors) of Cascade 220 that were really inexpensive due to being the last of a dye lot for each color. (People doing real on-purpose, un-half-vast projects like having all their yarn from one dye lot so that they don't have two different shades of Cornflower in their fucking cardigans. This is why leftover single balls in a dye lot are cheap.) Since Cascade 220 was on my list of acceptable yarns, I bought three skeins. Skeins are what you get at fairly ritzy yarn stores. They look like this. For reasons I am not apprised of, after paying an arm and a leg for your ritzy yarn, you have to go home, undo the skein, and gently wind the fucking yarn up into balls so that you can use it. (Putting too much tension on the yarn is not good for it, so you have to wind gently.) Personally, I think this is dumb as shit, but all the really snazzy yarn is sold in skeins so I can either buy cheap shitty center-pull acrylic from Wal-Mart or I can get used to the whole fucking skein thing. I swear the skein thing is an evil plan on the part of the people who sell center-pull ball-winder gadgets. I am not buying a ball-winder gadget out of sheer spite. Yes, that DOES make me happy.
I used size six needles, I think. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they were fives. They're smaller than you're supposed to use on Cascade 220 but I knit sort of funny and the swatch I did with size eights didn't look right at all after I fulled it. I hated it. It had holes in it and I could see daylight through it. I went back to the drawing board, used smaller needles, and made a dense, impermeable fabric that looked great when I fulled the swatch. In a different world, I took notes on what size needles I used. In this world, I used what made me happy and I don't remember what that was now. Possibly sixes, maybe fives. (If you're going to try to replicate what I did, you've got more problems than just what size needles to use, because the instructions go downhill from here anyway. Just do whatever you want or think will work. It'll be okay. It is when I do that, anyway.)
The skeins that I got were three, and three was their number. One was about the color of grape KoolAid, one was kelly green, and one was a relatively inoffensive medium blue. You'd think that they'd suck together. Hell, I thought they'd suck together, and I bought them. We'd both be dead wrong on that front. They look kind of appealing, felted together. It's weird. Pick colors you like. I did three colors because that was what was in the cheap bin. If you want more colors or fewer colors, well hell, I'm not stopping you.
I looked at instructions for creating bags, at patterns written by other people. They were nice, I'm sure, and they would have worked, probably. I don't know for sure because that's not what I did. I kind of did my own thing, which should surprise none of you. I made a circle on circular needles, a little bigger than I wanted the bag to actually be, a size that I guesstimated from looking at the swatch, and I knitted (in the different colors) until it was almost deep enough and then I did paired decreases at the corners (or what I decided would BE the corners, and I did count to make sure that they were evenly spaced) until I was tired of doing that and it looked about right whereupon I kitchenered the raw edges together to make the bottom of the bag. And then I made handles, about yay wide, picking up the stitches around the top edge of the bag. I knitted them about so long, which I judged by ye olde eyeballing, and then I attached them to the bag where I about thought they should go.
Anyway, with the thing knitted, I tucked in the loose ends and threw it in the washing machine with some jeans on HOT (I usually wash everything on warm, but fulling works better on HOT, a factoid I know from both the swatching part of the program and from internet research). Since I knew from the swatching thing that it would take two trips through the wash to be done, I did another load of jeans with the proto-bag in there, whereupon I took it out, subjected it to appropriate Christmas-morning sounds of oohing and aahing, and hung it up to dry.
Since you've waded through mountains of prose on a vaguely-technical subject that is of little interest to you, you deserve some pictures as a reward.
Here is a picture of the bottom of the bag, turned up so that you can see it. It's structurally the most interesting part of the bag because the rest of the bag is a featureless tube of stockinette. There are paired decreases on each side, sort of vaguely-visible diagonal lines. Pretend you can see them, okay?
Here is a picture of the bag in profile. There's a tape measure there for scale. The colors are sort of washed out due to the strong direct sunlight, but this was the only available flat surface for picture-taking. Sorry.
Here is a picture of the handles. They're in garter stitch so that they don't curl up. If I had these to do again, I might try some stockinette ones to see how they'd do curled up... or maybe garter to start with (so's to give a flat point-of-attachment) and then stockinette in the middle (to curl up for better tubular carrying surface). I'd probably also make them the same color next time, but I wanted them to be the same length so I did them on the same needle with two different colors of yarn because I can neither count nor measure and that was the next-best-way I could think of to have same-length handles.
I really wish that the internet had a touch-and-feel protocol. This fabric is so damn nifty... you're missing out on the way of it because I can't show it in pictures.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 05:26 pm (UTC)I like that the handles are both a different color from the top part.
Re: the jumping right ahead, picking-up-handle-stitches-wherever-they-look-right etc, I think that's most likely the more historically accurate method.
I've been carving new neural pathways re: structure of knitted lace with some success lately. As perhaps could be predicted, the most interesting and valuable out-of-print book on the subject now starts at $222. I hope they let me renew it at least once.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 06:00 pm (UTC)I'm glad you don't hate the colors, and as a bag, it's big enough for most of the things I can foresee me dragging around as knitting projects. It'll hold socks, mittens, hats (llama or otherwise), tank tops, etc. It is not big enough for complex, bulky aran sweaters or afghans, neither of which I can foresee myself making, except I might possibly wind up making a baby afghan for any, y'know, long-time friends who, having recently gotten married, start with the breeding thing... but I bet I could stuff one of those in the bag. It's more capacious than you probably think. (If there is breeding going on, do be sure to give me a bit of lead time (four months prior to parturition is ample) for that sort of thing.)
This fulling thing would make really great mittens. Really great mittens. Spectacular mittens, I bet. I bet I could do mittens. They wouldn't be stretchy -- the fulling takes all the stretch out of the fabric -- but I could add on cuffed ribbing after fulling and that would work just freaking dandy. (Note the complete lack of concern regarding how one makes mittens. I've never made mittens before but I assume there are instructions out there somewhere that I can gleefully not follow. It'll be okay. There's nary a mention on whether or not it's OKAY to put normal ribbing on fulled mittens. I don't really care what other people do. I'm going to do it and if they don't like it, fuck 'em. I'm apparently oblivious to the fact that it's freaking JULY outside and I have no earthly need for mittens at this juncture. I want them now for the same reason I wanted a tank top in the dead of winter. *sigh* It's a thing. This is what I mean by the pell-mell proceeding. It all seems so very reasonable until I'm in the middle of a project and [for example] up to my elbows in lye water and deer fur, whereupon explaining to innocent bystanders how I got there is... difficult.)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 09:53 pm (UTC)"Oh no, not again," thought the bowl of petunias.
Until you mentioned that it was an implementation decision rather than design/fashion decision, I thought the different-colored handles were a fashion choice. But, then, I own many, many pairs of black suit trousers because I don't believe that "choosing the proper color" is among my personal magisterium.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 02:56 am (UTC)