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Felted Bag
I made it in Colinette Skye yarn, in Zebra (1 hank) and Alizarine (3 hanks). I'm making a little purse with the remains, but it basically used all the yarn.
I didn't use a pattern. The bag was made by casting on 150 sts on a circular needle, knitting 10 rounds of Zebra, and then continuing in Alizarine until it measured about 52cm. Then I cast off 100 sts and knit back and forth on the remaining 50 sts until the panel was as long as 25 sts are wide (it was 31 rows). I hope that makes sense - basically it was a tube, and it closed at the bottom with a rectangle.
The tension was 10x10cm to 15 sts and 19 rows before felting.
The yarn for my felted bag:
The main colour:
This is for a border and the straps:
This is the only picture I took of the bag before felting - I was too excited about felting it to remember to take a picture:
I did a swatch and felted it before I started the bag, and it turned out exactly the same colour as the wool. It is shown below in some of the pictures. When I felted the actual bag, some of the black from the zebra mixed into the pink - I am so lucky that it did this uniformly! It doesn't look like mascara running down the bag or anything! You can sort of see above that before felting there were dark bits and light bits, but lots of different shades. In the felted bag it just looked dark and light (no lovely subtle tones) but as it's drying they seem to be reappearing a bit. Also, the Zebra on the border has fuzzed together so much that it is more grey than distinct stripes. But - the felted fabric is really nice - it's very dense, and the size and shape of the bag were as I had planned (luck not skill!).
This is the bag on it's own:
Now here is a picture showing the difference between the swatch and the actual bag:
You can see that it has darkened and is a bit less bright.
Now onto the border. Here you can see how smudgey it's gone, compared to above before felting:
However the straps are ok. I took them out before the bag, so they haven't felted quite so much, and the stripes are still obvious. I think that because they are thin stripes, fibres from both colours mix together and blend so they aren't as distinct. Here is a picture of the straps compared to the border:
I think I am probably going to knit a fluffy border to cover the current one, and use these straps.