What I Learn From Others

I teach a non-profit, read that as "free", knitting and crocheting class each week.  It started out with three of us and now there are 18 who come.  Some are beginners but most are doing their own thing.

That includes charity knitting. Tana knits for Wounded Warriors, Terri knits for a Scandinavian club, I knit for preemies at USC Hospital. Ginger and LeeAnn knit for the church. Marlene also knits for preemies, and Ebba is doing scarves for the homeless.  I think some of the others are doing a combination of their own stuff, plus charity.

One day I was going around looking at everyone's show and tell when I saw that LeeAnn was madly stabbing a nicely knitted purse.  It turns out she was felting - needle felting to be specific - and it looked fascinating.  Suddenly she held up this gorgeous striped purse with stars embellishing it and I wanted that purse!

Lee told me it was the simplest thing in the world to make and said she'd teach me in five minutes.  I could barely believe that, but first you have to buy 100% wool that hasn't been treated with anything - no superwash works, only straight wool.  Then you get out big needles and knit a good sized rectangle or square a bit bigger than  the purse you want.  Make the other side, put it together and attach knitted handles if you want that.

Next comes the tricky part.  If you have a top loading washing machine, you're golden.  Just put the now assembled purse in with a couple of tennis balls, turn the water temp to hottest and add a bit of dishwashing soap. The heat and agitation shrinks the wool, while opening the cuticles in the strands and they clutch and grab at each other and when you take it out after a nice rocky ride with those tennis balls, it's not so shrunken side to side, but definitely in length.  To be honest. my first effort turned out to be more like a business sized letter than the small clutch I had envisioned.  Never mind, work with it and give it more length next time.

After pinning the damp object to a thick towel to dry in the shape you want it to be, the fun begins.  You need a needle felter that comes in single to multi numbered needles with a hand guard to save your fingers.  You need a felting mat or brush to put under the material and punch into. Then you need some more wool.  It can be actual already felted squares, or it can be wool roving as long as it has enough wool in it to grab when you needle punch it.

This purse was super simple with polka dots.  I just crammed a bit of wool roving into a round template form and stabbed away until the roving was a tidy little dot, permanently affixed to the felted front of the bag. Who doesn't like polka dots?

This is the other side.  I actually only had enough of the lavender heather wool to do one side, so I used another wool which didn't felt as tightly.  Maybe you can see that I ruched the white, then I tacked the ruching in place with white thread and finally I started doing some free form stuff.  I learned to blend two shades of roving for a new color as well as pulling the roving out as if you were going to spin it, then I felted it down with lots of stabs.  Great fun.

This project is going to my daughter Tory who has lots of things I've made over the years, but seems to treasure them, so of course she must have this beginner project.

You may wonder why it's a two sided purse - because that's the way I roll.  Its a blank canvas just waiting to be decorated and itf it vaguely resembles the other side, then that's what I do.  Nothing I make is free from that idea that one sleeve can look slightly different from the other and so on.

And for those of you who are thinking this might be a way to cover up a mistake in your knitting, how perceptive of you.  Tune is again to see some of the ways I've disguised my less than perfect knitting with a bit of needle felting.  Come back soon and hugs to you and your projects too.  Pat