25 February 2007

felted bowl


felted bowl
Originally uploaded by chickadeesimone.
I always think I'm really going to love making felted projects. And somehow it never turns out all that well for me. Certainly I love knitting on giant needles and whipping though some project. And the felting itself. . . well, I always want to be inside the washing machine or dryer when it's felting so that I can actually watch the process.

So, against my better judgment, I made one of the felted bowls from the Interweave One Skein. Even though I've had the book for a few months (turns out I'm content to just look at knitting books!), this is the first project I've actually made from it.

So, I knit up two bowls. Both using Ecowool--one in oatmeal (pictured here) and one in a cornflower blue. Both took about 1/2 hour to knit, which is nice. And I just got around to felting them this weekend. For some reason, neither felted to my liking in the washing machine, so I threw them both in the dryer. That helped things along a little bit. I like the structure of the bowl (which you can't see to well here actually), but for some reason the blue bowl would not felt! It's just got all floppy and sad. So strange. That one got tossed out, so only the oatmeal-colored bowl survived. It's not really as stiff as I would have liked (any hints?) and I certainly can't imagine what on earth I'd actually put in a felted bowl. . .

5 comments:

Max said...

I think it looks nice with the oranges in it! Or you could put some felted ornaments in it - it could be a nice wintry decoration...

Beautiful tablecloth, Simone!

Emily said...

maybe you can starch it? looks cute!!

NJStacie said...

I was thinking of making some felted bowls, but needle-felting-stylee. Would you suggest this method instead? I can control the size/shape a bit more with needle felting, no? That bowl is super cute though - should you want to make more, please to be recalling that we are SWIMMING in mohair.

evandra said...

If you machine-wash the things, and dry them some, depending on the yarn, it may take a few cycles to really felt up as much as you want, and you can block them in between, or block them when they're still wet, to get the shape you want. I've had good success this way with felted coasters. I don't think I'd try to needle-felt a circle into a bowl; it'd take you about 10 years and would permanently cripple your hands!

simone said...

Agree with Becky. Needle felting would just be so painful in so many ways.

I'm not sure I want to put starch on it---starch always seems to gunk things up in my experience.

I did machine wash and machine dry, but I could probably toss it in for another round. That might work. Thanks!