Kiss My Knits!

Ze Booga Bag, she is mostly done!

The knitting was actually pretty easy, once I figured out how to “pick up and knit twisted” the stitches along the bottom. The most boring part was doing the i-cord for the handle. I didn’t realize until I got to that point that I had to knit 8 freakin’ feet of it. Skinny, but time-consuming. Good waiting room work, though.

Here’s the bag pre-felting. At this point, it’s all knitted, the ends are woven in, and it’s ready to go into the washing machine. The box on the chair is the box I had planned to put inside it to block it on. In this case, blocking means putting the bag snugly over the box and letting it dry to give it a nice flat base and sides.

Here’s the bag after one go-round in the washing machine with a pair of jeans and two towels. It’s getting a little smaller, a little fuzzier, and losing some stitch definition. I didn’t put it in a zippered pillowcase as recommended, because I wanted the stitch definition to really fade, and I figured the extra friction would help.

Here’s the bag after a second go-round, this time with a little bit of detergent which I thought might speed things up. I think it did, as you can see it’s much smaller now. However, it’s also really shiny because the detergent didn’t rinse out well. So I put it in a zippered pillowcase (I didn’t want it to fuzz up much more) and tossed it back in for another brief go-round.

Here’s the bag still damp from its brief third and final go-round in the washing machine, blocking on its box. It’s good to know that the Kureyon shrinks more lengthwise than it does in width. It’s probably down by a third of its size. After this picture was taken, I picked off the fuzzballs. The bag will stay over the box until it dries, which could take a couple of days.

This project has been very fun, and I’m ready to tackle more felted items! Just in time for warm weather, it’s a fun knitting thing I can do that holds up well to use in any season! Whee!

UPDATE!

The completed bag. Obese cat for scale.