first felting

As you might imagine, I immediately cast on a project with my new Danish wool. Two of my purchases were skeins of something called Preyarn, or Unspun. I have been wanting a pair of felted slippers, and this stuff is made just for felting. It's not twisted at all, and it's pretty much a worsted or sport weight, which means that it breaks like crazy. The woman who sold it to me said that she'd used about 200 grams for a pair of slippers she had made, so I bought two skeins of it. The pattern I chose calls for a Turkish cast on and knitting the slipper up from the toe using Magic Loop. I don't think the pattern considered that I would be using very weak yarn, and there was a lot of strain on the toe, which caused breakage and general holes in the knitting.

I finished the first slipper that night, and decided to felt it before I knit another, since I'd never felted before and had no idea how it would work. The pattern gauge is 4 sts to 1" pre-felting, and I was getting something closer to 3 stitches to an inch. It was huge, and I thought it might be bigger than it was supposed to be. When we got back to Hamburg (and my friend's apartment) we made a night of felting my single slipper. I looked for how-to online and found a mixture of advice, mostly involving violent agitation, soap and hot water. I settled on a spaghetti pot and ladle as felting tools, and changed the water a few times to make sure it was hot. (It also smelled very sheepy.)A very helpful article on Knitty told me what to expect: my knitted object would actually seem to expand and stretch before suddenly felting. I'm glad I knew to expect this, as this is precisely what happened. After about 30 minutes of stirring my slipper, I pulled it out and it had started to shrink. I could see the fibers beginning to felt, to such an extent actually that it was felting to itself inside the slipper. I got some scissors and used the blade to cut the it apart.

And voila! Suddenly my slipper was about the right size. The last thing I did (before setting it out to dry) was soap it up and more or less massage it onto my foot, so it shrunk to my foot's shape and size. I then rinsed it in cold water and set it on a windowsill to dry. Perfect!Of course, I used just a smidgen of a skein for my one slipper, so I will be left with a ton of purple felting yarn. I am interested in using it, but I can only imagine so many purple felted things in my life... maybe I should make myself a bag.

Pattern: Keep Away Felted Slippers, from Knit Front and Back
Yarn: Preyarn from OldMill