My first felted project

I branched out and did some felting. This little cute bowl is for my swap partner on the Knittinghelp.com forum. I am so glad that this turned out marginally cute. I used Lion Wool Prints on size 8 (you should use size 10s-I will next time: see Knitty article referenced below) and used Magic Loop to create a smallish hat and then felted it.

I started with 80 stitches (40 on each side for Magic Loop purposes) and knit in garter stitch in the round, knit one row and then purl a row. I knit until the body was 3 inches and I started to decrease. I basically decreased either 4 or 6 stitches on each knit row. For the first five or so decrease rows I decreased 4 stitches per row. I decreased two stitches for each "side" one after the first two stitches by knitting 2 together and another stitch on that side 2 stitches before the end of that side by ssk. Then I started to decrease 3 stitches each side on every knit row, for a total of 6 stitches decreased each knit row. When I got down to 20 stitches I knit 2 together across all the stitches and then purled and then knit 2 together again on the next row and then took one side of the needles and threaded the yarn through those stitches and then pulled the other side off the needles and threaded the waste yarn through those stitches and sewed the waste yarn into the bottom to reinforce it a little. It worked great! This was my first simple design of my own and I am very proud it worked out.


I used Knitty's guide to felting (http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter03/FEATfelthis.html) and it took forever for me to felt this because I was using a front loading washer.
I plan on making one of these for me too for the new apartment with different yarn maybe. I could end up making a lot of these and giving them away as gifts with bags of nice candy in them. The mottled effect of the variegated yarn here is very interesting to me. I was so worried that this was not going to felt because it took forever to get any real felting. Next time I will read the felting guidelines/instructions beforehand and will use size 10s for worsted weight yarn if I am going to felt it.