Since it was school vacation last week we were downtown Boston and took a detour on the way home. We visited the Fabric Place in Woburn. It is a store I used to shop years ago when I lived in Beverly, MA. It has always had a great selection of yarns. I wanted to start work on a felted bag for my daughter. She is interested in making a bag to use as a lunch bag. The lunch bag in the book “Knit One, Felt Too” inspired her. She chose the yarn colors herself. Shh…. I’m hoping to finish the project as a birthday present. We chose 100% wool from South America. Most of the books I read about Felting suggested using Lamb’s Pride or Cascade 220. My local yarn shops don’t carry these brands.
We chose Arucania “Nature Wool” because of the bright colors. Since, this brand wasn’t mentioned in any of the books I have I needed to make gauge swatches.
I’m still new to felting so I bought an extra skein to fool around with. I decided to make two sets of gauge swatches. Since some of the patterns that I have read require knitting double stranded I chose to knit a double strand gauge swatch on US size 15 needles and a second gauge swatch on US size 11 needles using a single strand of yarn.
The other small test I made while knitting the swatches was to change the knit pattern. I chose to knit the bottom part of each swatch using a garter stitch and the top part using the stockinette stick pattern.
The needles I used to make the gauge swatches were much larger than the yarn’s recommended US size of 4-7 needles for the yarn gauge of 18 stitches for a 4-inch swatch. Most felting patterns recommend generating very loose, soft fabric before the felting begins. I believe the swatches I made fit this requirement.
This shows the swatch before washing. The single strand knit is on the right. Notice how much bigger it is than the double strand knitting swatch on the left.
This is how the swatches look after one wash cycle. Notice how much the single strand swatch (right) shrank already compared to the double strand knit (left). I wanted less stitch definition so I put it for a second pass though the wash.
Final swatching! It felted nicely.
Observations
The single strand swatch feeling is thinner and more floppy than the double strand knit swatch. I would use this weight if I were to make a felted vest. It feels more like a thick fabric. There is a slightly thicker feeling to the garter stitch area but it is less of a transition than I would have thought. The double strand knit swatch is a much thicker.
It feels like a good potholder or trivet type thickness. The felted fabric is more sturdy; it would work well for a bottom of a bag. My daughter’s first instinct was to choose the thicker swatch to make her bag with but I’m still undecided. I might want to line the bag because we will be putting food in and out of it. If that is the case I’m thinking the lighter weight (single strand knit) might be better.
Gauge Swatch Information for a 4” x 4” square
There were some other details, which detracted from my daughter’s birthday. Our sweet dog Jessie was scheduled to be spayed. Jessie came home from the surgery totally drugged out. When she finally came too Jessie was whimpering. Even I was upset so, I can understand why my daughter was crying. Thankfully, Jessie is reviving abit. She doesn’t whine any more but the medicine really knocks her out. She can’t seem to wake up in time to pee outside. The last two days I’ve been making sure that she has a towel under her butt in case she leaks. I hope Jessie is better in time for my daughter’s sleepover this Friday.
Even though my daughter knew I was running behind on the lunch bag I think she was disappointed that I hadn’t finished it on her birthday. She helped me to pick out the wool and knew I was shooting targeting her birthday as a finishing point. Shopping, shoveling snow and taking care of Jessie were taking longer than we thought. I finished all the tying in of yarn ends and the edges this morning. Take a look at the before felting view. It’s huge! As soon as my daughter comes home from school I’ll shrink it in the washing machine
Our backyard bird feeder in snow. We are in the middle of another snow storm. We've had the wierdest winter. It was warm through December. NewEngland got their first snowfall after Christmas. So now it is snowing still into Spring.
I thought I should check in with some knitting news. See Below to see how far I have gotten on the lunch bag. I'm a little more than half way.
I get up from the sofa and look who is sneaking my knitting. I sometimes think she is a playful cat instead of a dog. She just loves balls of yarn. The other thing she likes is the chase game when you RUN to catch Jessie and the knitting project before it completely comes off the needles. There is one nice thing about her though. She doesn’t chew to destroy things. She has never torn any yarn or toy, she just mouths them.
Since it was school vacation last week we were downtown Boston and took a detour on the way home. We visited the Fabric Place in Woburn. It is a store I used to shop years ago when I lived in Beverly, MA. It has always had a great selection of yarns. I wanted to start work on a felted bag for my daughter. She is interested in making a bag to use as a lunch bag. The lunch bag in the book “Knit One, Felt Too” inspired her. She chose the yarn colors herself. Shh…. I’m hoping to finish the project as a birthday present. We chose 100% wool from South America. Most of the books I read about Felting suggested using Lamb’s Pride or Cascade 220. My local yarn shops don’t carry these brands. 
We chose Arucania “Nature Wool” because of the bright colors. Since, this brand wasn’t mentioned in any of the books I have I needed to make gauge swatches.
The other small test I made while knitting the swatches was to change the knit pattern. I chose to knit the bottom part of each swatch using a garter stitch and the top part using the stockinette stick pattern.
This shows the swatch before washing. The single strand knit is on the right. Notice how much bigger it is than the double strand knitting swatch on the left.
This is how the swatches look after one wash cycle. Notice how much the single strand swatch (right) shrank already compared to the double strand knit (left). I wanted less stitch definition so I put it for a second pass though the wash.
It feels like a good potholder or trivet type thickness. The felted fabric is more sturdy; it would work well for a bottom of a bag. My daughter’s first instinct was to choose the thicker swatch to make her bag with but I’m still undecided. I might want to line the bag because we will be putting food in and out of it. If that is the case I’m thinking the lighter weight (single strand knit) might be better.
