accidental pride project
Jun. 28th, 2017 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidenLeela lurves fibery toys. her favorite is a wet felted wool number that we used to call "fuchsia infinity" but has been tugged and chewed and loved into "fuchsia snake". carrying a woolly toy on walks is the key to breaking her concentration when she is denied prey (goddammit outdoor cats) or play (that other dog is across a busy street). last year I made an attempt at knitting up interlocking rings that could be worn over my wrist. they were great except for the part where they were overstuffed and under felted so they came apart fast.*
anyhoo, I have a couple Noro rainbow rolls , which are them selling the precursor to yarn - it's drafted into a thin strip of roving, ready for twist to be added. (I thought it would be fun to finish it as a chain ply, but it's behind another project that's on the wheel.) many of their sample projects are felted, so I decided to let myself use my fancy/expensive materials to make a thing I might use every day.
improvised pattern: 16 stitches in the round. i used color transitions as a measure of length. blue-green on US 10 (magic loop) pinky orange on US 9 (my fattest DPNs). i switched to DPNs for the second ring because magic loop was too hard on the fragile not-yarn. I loosely stuffed each tube with wool roving (I color coordinated, green in the cool colored tube and yellow in the warm one in case fibers peeked out.)
the roving knit up just fine, but my hopes of grafting the tubes into rings were dashed. I had no idea how much tugging and friction was involved in kitchener stitch, and even doing a whip stitch as gently as possible involved multiple breaks. the joins were particularly obvious and lumpen before felting.
since my last felted project didn't felt well, i did more research on method. i stuffed loosely, put the item in a big pillowcase (knotted closed), and ran through the wash on hot/cold with three tennis balls.** i meant to check during the wash cycle, but with the extra-small setting it ran fast. the washer had shaken the knot right out of the pillowcase, but the machine wasn't covered in loose fiber inside (whew). i gave it a cursory smoothing, then i ran the pillowcase and the toy through the dryer and it was done.
toy is super-light, springy, and so far strong enough for tug. Leela digs it.
*I made them from absolutely terrible yarn that was the result of a well-intentioned gift of fiber that was not really fit for spinning. or at least I never figured out how to make it work.
**not dog toys. we have a can of them for drying down-filled items in the dryer.
anyhoo, I have a couple Noro rainbow rolls , which are them selling the precursor to yarn - it's drafted into a thin strip of roving, ready for twist to be added. (I thought it would be fun to finish it as a chain ply, but it's behind another project that's on the wheel.) many of their sample projects are felted, so I decided to let myself use my fancy/expensive materials to make a thing I might use every day.
improvised pattern: 16 stitches in the round. i used color transitions as a measure of length. blue-green on US 10 (magic loop) pinky orange on US 9 (my fattest DPNs). i switched to DPNs for the second ring because magic loop was too hard on the fragile not-yarn. I loosely stuffed each tube with wool roving (I color coordinated, green in the cool colored tube and yellow in the warm one in case fibers peeked out.)
the roving knit up just fine, but my hopes of grafting the tubes into rings were dashed. I had no idea how much tugging and friction was involved in kitchener stitch, and even doing a whip stitch as gently as possible involved multiple breaks. the joins were particularly obvious and lumpen before felting.
since my last felted project didn't felt well, i did more research on method. i stuffed loosely, put the item in a big pillowcase (knotted closed), and ran through the wash on hot/cold with three tennis balls.** i meant to check during the wash cycle, but with the extra-small setting it ran fast. the washer had shaken the knot right out of the pillowcase, but the machine wasn't covered in loose fiber inside (whew). i gave it a cursory smoothing, then i ran the pillowcase and the toy through the dryer and it was done.
toy is super-light, springy, and so far strong enough for tug. Leela digs it.
*I made them from absolutely terrible yarn that was the result of a well-intentioned gift of fiber that was not really fit for spinning. or at least I never figured out how to make it work.
**not dog toys. we have a can of them for drying down-filled items in the dryer.
