Taking shortcuts don't pay off

 I'm a lazy person. It's really just a fact. I am. I always try to find the easy way around, and don't do more than I have to. Sometimes that works just fine, sometimes it doesn't. This post should really be about felting samples. Or more correctly the lack of felting samples. It's a good thing, you know, to make a sample to see how much your knitting will shrink when you felt it. But of course it takes time and effort, something a lazy person would avoid....

I'm making a little bag for a friend. A bag to keep small things in, to make them easier to find in her purse. She liked my knitting money purse, so I was making her something like that. Knitted and felted in the washer. I bought yarn made for felting, and the lady in the yarn shop told me it would shrink something about 40 %. I trusted her, neglected making a sample but did my math (I've always been good at math) and calculated how I should knit to get the size I wanted. Only, it wouldn't shrink! The first time in the washer (in 60 degrees C) it shrunk 2 cm. Less than 10 %. Ok, I had another try, put more stuff in the washer to get more friction and waited. Well it was smaller, but still only 25 % shrinkage. I even tried to felt it by hand but it didn't help.

It's not huge, but a little to big for it's purpose. At least I think so. So now I'm making a new one. But this time I crochet. I always feel more in control when I crochet than when I knit. Hopefully I will get it right this time. I will probably run out of yarn though, so I hope my husband can take me to town tomorrow. The too big bag will be something else. I have some thoughts...

This mobile phone cozy was felted together with the too big bag. It's for a woman at my husbands work, she wanted a cozy with a wolf. Interesting enough to see what that will look like in the end... This one felted better, maybe because I had hand felted it a bit before putting it in the washer. (It has some light fibers all over, since it caught some yellow from the tennis balls I use for friction when I felt.)

But still, it's a bit too big. It's very spacious even for my phone, and the phone she is using is smaller. Sigh! So I guess I'll crochet a new one when I'm done with the gray bag. At least I'll have something to do.