F is for Fickle Felting Failure

First off, I had a wonderful time at Georgia FiberFest a couple weeks ago. There are some swatches I want to make related to the classes I took from Franklin Habit and Galina Khmeleva. With luck, I'll blog about that in October.

In the meantime, let's talk about an epic fail!

Back in July, I decided I wanted to make a felted bag for storing my Majacraft flyers. My mother purchased the high-speed head for me for my birthday. (Thank you, Mom!) While it took a few months for it to arrive, it was worth it. But I realized I now have 6 flyers (not including the jumbo-sized Overdrive). Once upon a time, my spinning bag was the right size. But now, all those helpful accessories don't fit. I decided to make a felted bag to keep my flyers safe and unscratched.

I purchased 6 skeins of Patons North America Classic Wool Roving. This is a nice bulky yarn that will felt when thrown into the washing machine. It isn't too expensive. With coupon, the materials cost came out around $40. I used a US size 13/ 9.0mm needle from my Denise Interchangeable Needle set and worked in 1×1 ribbing. I chose 1×1 ribbing because I knew I could pick up in the ribs to subdivide the interior into separate sections. I also figured the 1×1 ribbing would create a dense fabric when felted.

I started by working a section of 1×1 ribbing 14 inches wide by 10 inches high for the bottom of the bag. Using Gwen Bortner’s encasement method, I picked up stitches on all four sides and worked in the round until the sides were about 9 inches tall. At that point, I seamlessly inserted the dividers using a combination of techniques from TECHknitter, Marilyn Hastings, and Rick Mondragon. Both TECHknitter and Marilyn Hastings use a rib for picking up when making a zipper placket. I used a version of Rick Mondragon's sliding loop intarsia technique to knit up the dividers seamlessly. If you want to see more, here's the video. I was very, very pleased with myself for being so clever. As you can see in the video, the panel joins don't even show on the outside of the bag.

After I completed the interior panels, I bound off three of the four top edges. I worked a rectangle just four stitches/two pairs wider and a little longer than the 14×10-inch bag bottom. I picked up around three sides and worked back-and-forth to make a lip. I finished by making cord ties using a lucet.

By now you may be noticing that one of the things I did not do was make a large swatch, measure, throw it in the washing machine, and measure again. When you do not offer a sacrifice to the goddesses of knitting and felting, sometimes they will not smile upon your enterprise.

 Exhibit #1: Seamless bag, before felting, exterior.

Exhibit #2: Seamless bag, before felting, interior.
Plastic bags lightly tacked with dental floss to prevent the interior spaces from felting together.

Exhibit #3: Felted disaster!

 

Not sure what to say about this. :-/

The thing that is most peculiar to me is how the dividers did not full the same as the short sides of the bag, even though they were all worked in 1×1 ribbing in the same direction and were all about 10 inches wide by 9 inches tall. Now they are the same height, but not the same length. And that height is shocking — from 9 inches before fulling to about 4 inches, so more than 50%. This means the bag is not tall enough for the flyers. The short sides of the bag exterior shrank from 10 inches to about 7 inches. But the interior dividing panels did not shrink as much horizontally, so now they ruffle. I did try running this through the wash again without the plastic resists — thinking the dividing panels just needed more fulling. Nope — not the solution.

Notice the lid shrank more than the bottom of the bag. That 10×14 bottom is now about 7×12, but the lid is only 6.5×9 even though the lid started out slightly larger! Again, same stitch pattern, same yarn, same needles, same technique. And the lid is now somehow off-center.

I'm really not sure what to do with this. It has been sitting in time-out for the last two months. Do I cut it up? Do I throw it in the compost pile? Do I tack the ruffled dividers together to form a sort of egg-carton pattern and use the bag to store something else (not sure what)? Do I give the thing a good soak and see if it will stretch and reshape? Do I attack it with the multi-pronged felting needle? Do I find a bonfire?

What have I learned?
1×1 ribbing shrinks vertically but not horizontally.
Hubris is bad.
I don't know nearly enough about fulling knitting.

Of course, I still don't have a nice bag for my Majacraft flyers! I haven't decided if I want to try this experiment again (maybe without the plastic bag resists?) or if I should make a bag in 1×1 ribbing but don't full it?

And off topic — yes, this is photographed in the same spot on my shiny new front porch. In the before images, I hadn't done any painting. In the more recent image the wood is white due to the primer. I'm not quite to the point of painting.