It's hard to believe it's the end of August. Summer 2005 has just flown by in a hot and humid haze -- you got to love the alliteration there! I hate to say it, but it's time to start planning for the holidays, especially if I'm going to be knitting gifts for friends and family. Things got a little out of control towards the end of the holiday season last year, so I didn't really get to enjoy the lead up to Christmas as much as I should have. I'm one of those people who always likes to learn from their mistakes, and if planning ahead requires ordering my Christmas cards in August and writing them in September, so be it. My goal is just to enjoy the season a little more, and not get so stressed out about everything that (I feel) needs to be done.

As far as the knitted gifts go, I think bags and scarves are my best bet as they knit up relatively quickly. The Booga Bag is always a good choice and I can see one or two people getting a kick out of that. I'm considering the Marakesh Shoulder Bag as a gift for my step-mother-in-law but I'll have to wait and see if I like the look of the finished project. As annoying as it is to knit, I do like the look of the Eros Eyelet Scarf. It's just a really trendy piece, something that I can see my female friends incorporating into their wardrobes. We'll see.

Well, at least for the time being. My recent preoccupation (okay, obsession) with my Boogas caused me to completely ignore my other project, Sitcom Chic. So...without further ado, here is the final photo of the two bags. I'm pretty pleased with the results:


Progress on Sitcom Chic has been generally good over the last couple of days. Finishing sleeve #2 was definitely the highlight of the weekend, and I'm more than a little relieved the the DPN portion of the project is now over. While it seemed to take less time to knit sleeve #2 than it did to knit sleeve #1, sleeve #2 kept jumping off the needles. It was too horrible to describe. Dropped stitches everywhere. Fortunately, though, this trauma was short lived.

I ended up joining all three pieces late Sunday afternoon. Here's a picture I snapped prior to the join:


I had no problems joining the pieces, but I'm finding the sweater to be very heavy on the needles. It's like there's too much fabric. I don't think that's the case, but I won't know for sure until I cast off. I'm just worried about the stitches stretching around the armholes because of the weight. For the time being, though, I'm happily knitting away. I'm only rows away from the yoke detailing. After all of the stockinette stitches, yarn overs will definitely make for a nice change.

I decided to treat myself to the Denise needle set -- it beats tearing my hair out later on. The package should arrive sometime this week!

Since Carol's bags are just so beautiful, I just had to include some photos in this blog. The green of the grass really sets off the colors in each bag.

Why is it that things that seem so simple always turn out to be the most complicated? The whole concept of felting seemed easy enough to understand: throw some wool into a washing machine full of hot water and heavy items, let the bag agitate until desired level of felting has been reached, remove from machine and block. Simple enough, but had I known a few months ago what I know now, Booga Bag #102 would have been much better off.
Booga Bag #102 was the first Booga ever knitted by yours truly. Never having felted anything before, I took great pains to follow the felting instructions in the pattern. I wasn't too sure of what to expect, so I checked the bag at the end of each full cycle. I could see that something was happening, but it wasn't happening too quickly. Since the pattern indicates that 3 or 4 trips through the wash may be needed to achieve desired level of felting, I wasn't too worried -- I think I probably ran the bag through the wash about 5 times before blocking it. Since I didn't have a clear understanding as to how the finished felted bag was supposed to look, I felt that I had achieved the desired result. Hey, not only was it fuzzy, but it had even shrunk a little from its numerous trips through the wash! It even looked like the picture. So what if the dimensions were a little (okay, a lot) off -- I knit for gorillas! It was my bag and I couldn't wait to start using it.
It wasn't long, however, before I started noticing a couple of problems with my creation. It doesn't react well to heavy items like wallets and cell phones. In other words, the bottom sags and looks so weird that I have to take extra care not to put anything in the bag that would give it a "weighed down" look. The bag is also a little too deep and lacks any kind of structure. Still, I thought that this was normal and didn't think anything of it...until a few days ago.
Co-worker Carol is relatively new to knitting. I actually gave her the Booga Bag pattern a couple of months ago to help her transition away from scarves. Since then she has been knitting bags as gifts for her grand daughters, but has only just gotten around to felting them. The results blew me away. Her bags are cute and compact, perfectly shaped. They even stand up on their own! The felting is perfect -- the stitches are barely visible! I think it was at that point that I realized that something had gone horribly wrong with Booga Bag #102. Further discussion revealed the problem.
Even though my bag had gone through the wash 5 times, it had gone through 5 complete cycles (i.e. hot wash, cold rinse, spin). While the hot water got the felting process started, the cold water actually stopped it. Carol, on the other hand, stopped her washing machine after each wash cycle and then reset it to start the wash cycle all over again, thereby keeping her bags out of the cold rinse cycle until she had achieved the desired level of felting. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
I applied this method to Booga Bag #150 and have achieved perfect results thus far. I did have to reset the machine a couple of times and vary the length of the wash cycles to get the bag to where I wanted it to be. While I don't enjoy hanging out in the basement, it's a necessary part of this process.
Booga Bag #150 turned out so well that I got this crazy idea into my head that I should try to refelt Booga Bag #102. But could it be done? Since I figured that I'd already wrecked it, what did I have to lose? Here are some pictures of the bag prior to the second felting (4.5" D x 9" W x 11 H):

And after:

I did have to refelt the bag with the straps attached. Hopefully this won't make too much of a difference. It doesn't look like it's any the worse for going through the process a second time, but we'll see.

Here's what I learned from this experience:

• Things are never as simple as they seem: Had I done a little more research, I would have known how to do things right the first time.
• Be patient: The process does take time.
• Don't walk away!: Monitor all stages of the felting process -- this will involve camping out in the basement/laundry room.
• Get to know the washing machine: Key in determining the length of the cycles, whether you can stop/start the machine in mid cycle, etc.
• Dimensions and structure are important: Get as close to the finished dimensions as possible. The bag should be very fuzzy and have some structure to it -- keep felting if individual stitches are still visible.
• Refelting is possible: It's comforting to know that a project gone wrong can be salvaged under certain circumstances.

Booga Bag #150 was finally felted yesterday afternoon. I'm still new to the whole felting process, so I was more than a little nervous when I threw the pillowcase containing the Booga Bag and I-cord into the washing machine. Of course, it didn't help that I completely screwed things up when I attempted to felt my first bag, Booga Bag #102, but I'll save that story for a future post.
I was extra vigilant when it came to Booga Bag #150. I actually stayed in the laundry room and reset the washing machine at the end of every wash cycle! Apart from the I-cord escaping and winding itself around the pillowcase during one of the wash cycles, everything went smoothly. The bag even felted down to the finished dimensions listed in the pattern -- 4.5" D x 7.5" W x 8.5" H. Amazing! The bag is now happily blocking on its shoe box. We'll see how things look in the next 24 hours, but I'm pleased with the results so far.

Today I decided to pick up a project that has been on the verge of completion for the last several months. While I absolutely adore the Booga Bag pattern, I'm not too crazy about the Noro Kureyon #150 that I chose for my second attempt. This just goes to show that you can't really pick a color yarn based on images that you find online. Had I seen this color in a store I never would have bought it -- too much gray for my taste. At any rate, it is what it is.
Finishing the project took next to no time. All I really had to do was weave in the ends and finish the I-cord, but this seemed like back-breaking work a couple of months ago. I am nothing if not lazy. Next step in the process: felting.