Ready to be finished...

Please ignore the cobwebs sticking to the basement wall behind my washer and dryer. Ick.

...felting.*

Seriously...these bowls were fun, quick knits, but the felting process? So not my thing. I love seeing how the knitted item transforms during the process, but the process itself? Too slow for my liking! LOL Each of these bowls took at least 15 - 20 minutes in the machine to felt and shrink down to the desired size. (This is about par for how long other felting projects have taken for me.) But since I hate to waste water, I was trying to have at least three bowls to do at a time. But because of the fiber migration that takes place during felting -- and especially with this furry Lopi! -- I was only doing one bowl at a time to minimize how many errant strands I'd have to pick off each bowl in the end. Thus, I spent over an hour on this today, doing these last three bowls. (And let's not even talk about the drying time...how I wish I could just pop them in the dryer! :})

It's so interesting how each one, despite being made in the exact same way with the exception of the yarn colors, turned out slightly differently during felting. Some are taller than others, some have more of a turned in rim at the top -- the black and gold one above really has a nice shape because of the black yarn at the rim (black always felts much tighter for me than other colors). The purple bowl? It took forever to felt and never did get very tight...it's shape is more of a flat basket than an actual bowl. This is the one I knitted Stacy Charles Ritratto in with the Lopi as an experiment...which I assume made the difference in how it felted, as the purple felted just fine in the other bowls it was in.

So...felting...fini! Just have to wait for them to dry and I can fill them with their goodies and give them to their intended recipients! Hopefully this weekend.

*For any purists out there, yes, I realize that when you apply this process to an already knitted item, the proper term is actually "fulling," not "felting." Felting is what is done to unspun fibers. But most people today use "felting" interchangeably, so who am I to confuse anyone this close to Christmas? ;)