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Felting is scary. You spend all this time knitting an item (a hat, a bag, some slippers, even a bunny...) and then you take it, put it in the washing machine on hot and purposefully shrink it. But that whole time while its in the washing machine.... you have no control. You have no control over how much it shrinks and no control over which parts curl up and get all shrunk and squished togther. Its scary.... but its also kinda cool, too.
Patricia got me some GORGEOUS brown alpaca yarn for Christmas, and she sent it along with a pattern for a felted hat. After my little Christmas Eve incident, I had a lot of time to knit.
- the pattern: Helen's Fabulous Fulled Hat
- materials:
- 200 grams of feltable yarn like wool. I used a 2-ply brown alpaca yarn. Knit with two strands held together. *Make sure you don't use a super-wash wool, it won't felt*
- two size 11, 16"-20" circular needles (or one size 11 circular needle and a set of size 11 double pointed needles)
- one stitch marker
- the process: knit the hat according to the pattern listed above, felt the hat and dry it on a form.
- knitting: When you knit this hat its going to be absolutely HUGE. But don't worry, when you felt it, it'll shrink down just right.
- prepping: Before you actually start felting -- you've gotta do a bit of digging in your kitchen. You need to find a form of some kind to dry your hat on. Whatever form the hat dries on -- thats what shape it will take. As it turns out, I have a head the size of piece of tupperware, more specifically, a Rubbermaid 6 cup container with a #3 on the bottom.
- First, measure your head.
- Then, go through your kitchen and try to find a cylinder of some kind that has the same circumference.
- Try to find something that's at least 4 inches tall so you can stretch the hat over it pretty far.
- felting: There's lots of articles out there on how to felt (technically you're fulling rather than felting... this Knitty article explains the difference as well as a how-to). I recommend doing a google search on "How to Felt" so you can get an idea about how the techniques work and why. This is what I do:
- I put the knit hat in a zippered pillow case.
- Then I put a few pair of jeans in the washing machine along with the hat/pillow case.
- Add a little bit of soap.
- Set the washing machine on heavy agitation, "HOT/COLD" setting and "no spin" and turn it on
(I've got a front-loading washing machine... which makes it kind of scary, because I can't stop the cycle half-way through... which is one of the nice advantages of top-loading washer).
- After its done, take it out and check out the size -- if you need to shrink it further, run it through another cycle -- if its the right size -- then go onto the drying step (you can figure out if its the right size by testing it with the form you've chosen in the previous step).
- Don't be gentle with it!!! its likely that while the hat was felting in the washing machine, it will have gotten itself stuck together -- grab it, pull it apart, shake it out, be mean to it. Try to uncurl the edges as best you can. You can't hurt the hat. Just do it.
- drying: So now you've got this soggy fuzzy mess that smells kinda like a wet dog... but nicer (maybe thats how alpacas smell like in the rain? I dunno). Whatever position your soggy felted thing dries in, is what position it'll stay in. So, in order to get it to actually look like a hat, you need to dry it on the form you chose before. Take the hat and stretch it over the form. You've got a couple choices when it comes to the brim. You can curl it up all around, you can curl it up in the back and leave it straight in the front... or you can leave it straight all around. Have fun!
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