I’ve never felted before.

It seems felting got popular a buncha years back and I didn’t jump on the bandwagon because:

1. I was too poor and only bought cotton or acrylic.
2. I’ve never owned a laundry machine, and not gonna pay $2 a load to attempt to felt.
3. I mostly make amigurumi, scarves and other small projects.. usually not felted (that or I don’t look at the felted patterns).
4. I again don’t buy wool as amigurumi works up great with a cheap, stiff acrylic yarn
5. Felting seemed scary – if you screw up, theres no going back! OMG O__O

I came across this wonderful pattern http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/felted-crochet-slippers (Raverly link) in crochet form and HAD TO MAKE. I do have felting happy wool (Yarn Addiction + a close out sale on discontinued Bernat Lana) and been buying wool at Dressew’s $2 a ball deal (Vancouver, Canada – best craft/fabric store ever).

With that said, I got the mats, the mad skillz and bought the pattern… shit I should felt the swatch, eh? And screw $2 a load in the washer in my apartment building.

I HATE doing swatches. Crocheting up a square to check my gauge sucks. I NEVER get near the right gauge, I crochet tight – worse as a beginner – you couldn’t fold my dishcloths! I find crocheting the square, pulling it, doing it again to be a chore. Luckly with amigurumi, gauge isn’t too important when you know how tight you crochet and the yarn you are using.

So I torture myself and make this:

As you can see, I needed a bottle of Vex so I wouldn’t get pissed off I am wasting nice wool yarn. In retrospect, I shoulda made it a triangle so I’d get a cool pirate patch out of the deal. At least I did it in half-double crochet stitches, I like that stitch.

Screwing the coin washing machine – I’m doing this by hand. I’m crazy, I’m cheap and I’m bored with yarn, a pattern I wanna attempt, and a couple bottles of Hard pink lemonaide.

So, Felting by hand =

1. Put project in warm or hot water with a bit of dish soap (as per about.com)
2. Swish around your project, re-creating agitation – the action creating the fibers to join together.
3. Continue to shake/wave/swish your project until it has shrunk/become dense enough to the desired effect. Ensure you are checking your work frequently to prevent over felting.
4. Remove excess water, then block.

So what happened to me – I went stupid and added way too much soap, creating a bubbly mess that looked like a super bubble bath.

This pic was after I scooped most of the bubbles out after a few swishes. I grabbed my bottle of Vex and a novel to kill the time and shook the swatch in the hot water. For a swatch this small, it took only minutes, however bigger stuff I suggest you bring something to do (or drink *wink*). Again, the excess of soap bit me in the ass and I rinsed out the soapy swatch.

The result:

Hmmm it worked…very well – very effective – not a pain in the ass – not scary…. that was it?