Frogging The Night Away

I've been busy the last couple evenings taking sweaters apart. The teal 100% wool pullover in XL yielded 25 ounces of beautiful yarn (my cost $2) and the ice blue 80% silk, 20% cashmere short sleeved pullover (25¢ at a church rummage sale) yielded 15.5 ounces.



Pioggia suggested that I should photograph a small object along with knit items so as to give some idea of scale - hence the AoxoMoxoA CD (Grateful Dead) along side the balls of yarn. {g} My camera is still refusing to pick up green tones so that in this shot the teal yarn appears to be navy blue, but I played around with the colors in a close up and this is a little truer to the color although a bit lighter.



I'm thinking about the French Market Bag from Knitty for the teal and a shrug from the silk & cashmere as it would be a shame to waste it on a felted bag.

The large Lopi bag I finished last week is now felted. I stuck it inside a pillow case closed with a big rubber band after reading a couple horror stories about what wool fuzz can do to a washing machine. My faithful Maytag is 23 years old now and except for two sets of new belts has been chugging along fine - I don't want to wreck it!! This time, I started the load out on the low water level and let it go 10 minutes, then moved the timer back to start and increased the water level to medium to add more hot water, then one more time 10 minutes later to the large load level. I let it spin out in the washer and this morning, I tossed it in the dryer for 20 minutes. It felted to about the same texture as the first one and that's ok. I can still see the stitches, but the fabric is condensed enough that nothing is going to push through like an errant knitting needle. It started out at 20" across and 17" tall not counting the folded base, it felted to 17" across & 14" tall. The base is a 9x16" oval. (The CD used for scale in this photo is Jerry Garcia's How Sweet It Is"