Domestic Anti-Goddess:: My felting adventure!

I've had this great book that my sister gave me for ages and keep meaning to give one of the cute patterns in it a try, in particular the knitted dinosaur!  I know just who to knit that for!

However I have piles and piles of patterns and magazines I want to try out, not to mention a whole shelf of knitting books but I'll get there some day!

 

I finally had some spare time to myself recently and elected to try the simplest pattern in the book for wee mice! I had the perfect wool remnants and bought a bag of toy stuffing on Ebay, I was ready to rock, first the mouse - next the world!

In true domestic anti-goddess style however, I hadn't really considered the word 'felted' in the title!  Felting to me has long seemed like some sort of black magic knitting technique that only really skilled people can do.  I doubted very much that I would be able to pull it off since I'm not even very good at washing my own clothes.  Downhearted, I gave up for a while.

But I couldn't get my wee mouse out of my mind!  He's so cute!  (I imagined)  What the heck, I'll give it a bash!  So I knitted his wee body......see?

Right!  There's no stopping me now!

What do I need now - soap flakes!  Not washing powder, actual soap.  Ok!  I'll get them next time I'm at the Supermarket I thunk, cept I wouldn't.  Nor would I get them at the 4 other supermarkets I tried.  A cry for help on twitter was met with the suggestion of buying them online but I was too impatient, I wanted to felt my mouse now!

Someone else on twitter suggested Boots, really?  I guess they do have a kind of cleaning section so I went to the massive Boots on two floors near my work at lunchtime.  The first girl I asked was about 18, she took me over to the bars of 'Pears' and hand soap.  I tried to explain that it was more like a detergent for washing clothes.  "I want to felt my knitting" I said, she just stared at me so I wandered off to look myself.  I tried the baby section (I don't know! I don't have a baby!) to no avail and then spent some time looking for a memeber of staff who happened to be an old lady - out of luck.

As always in situations like this (and you'd be surprised) I call my best friend Lucy loves... "Oi!" I purr, "you know what soap flakes are right?!  I'm not losing my mind?!"
"Yes" she says, "like Granny's soap flakes?" (notice Lucy's use of the word like for it's true purpose!)  "YES!  where do you get them?!" I demanded.  Lucy said Tesco but I had already tried there, I was giving up.  "But Con," she says, "why don't I just give you some soap shavings?  You know, coz I make soaps n'that?"................. I never thought of that!

So finally I am armed with some 'soap flakes' well they're more like 'soap gratings' but soap nevertheless!  I spend the next week or so making lewd faces at Mr Kapow while asking if he wants to help "felt my mouse" which he politely declines (I think he doesn't believe there really is a mouse).

I guess I'm on my own.

So I go back to my book - you will need a bowl / basin of boiling soapy water - by accident I put all of my soap in!

check!

a bowl of really cold water with ice cubes in

check!

some rubber gloves so you don't scald your hands

check! (kind of)*

*I bought new thick gloves specifically for this purpose but couldn't find them, turns out they were in something called a drawer.  So I ended up with two mismatched random old gloves, both left hands so had to wear one backwards.  I really wouldn't recommend this for felting mouses, and yes I scalded my hand!

Righty-ho!

Get your mousie and put him in the hot water and agitate the fabric (that means rub right?) for a while then put it in the cold and do the same.  Keep alternating until the desired feltedness is achieved.

At this stage it occurs to me that I think I heard somewhere that only wool with a high wool content will felt.  Hm... I have no idea what this wool is as I lost the label.  It seems wooly though!

The dye came out quite a lot but before too long I had what I considered to be a sufficiently felted mouse!  Yippee!

Very pleased with myself I rinsed him and put him on my pulley to dry.  He's still not dry.  Come on!  Is he dry yet?!  No?  Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

While I'm wating I read over the book again wondering how to sew him up....wait a minute.....what ears?  I didn't felt his ears!  I didn't make him ears!

Aw pants!  I've none of that wool left and I used all my soap.