Felted Tab Bag Disaster (sort of)

So my favorite knitting project to date is my giant felted green and brown tab bag. I love it. It was the first real pattern that I had made up and turned out exactly how I wanted it to. I use it as my knitting bag every day. Well anyway I wanted to make one that is similar but tweaked a little for my grandmother (and knitting hero) for her 80th birthday. Her birthday is tomorrow and I’ve been working on this thing forever.


I finally felted it Mon. night – the first time felting in my washer. So I was smart – I made a little pouch thing and felted that for a trial run. It turned out great so no worries about my washer right? Riiiiiiight. I put in the bag happily expecting the same results. But I made one near-fatal error. I didn’t put the bag into a pillowcase when felting it. Always put the felted item in the pillow case!!!! I opened the washer and the two I-chord handles that I had purposely made short for my short grandma had wrapped and tangled themselves around the agitator. It completely stretched them out – and stretched out the tabs holding them to the bag. Instead of nice, even rectangles all of the tabs are now different sized triangles!!! Instead of a big bag with a short handle it’s a small bag with ridiculously long handles and skiiiiny little tabs. It’s completely not what I thought it would be.

To make matters worse I used Lamb’s Pride Bulky. Which I’m generally very happy with. But I’d never felted that out of a pillowcase before. My god it’s so furry!!! It looked like some sort of animal…. And the glittery yarn that I knit into it was completely hidden by the mohair fur. Ugh.

So I washed it again, in a pillowcase and all that happened was the bag got smaller. The handles are still way too long and it’s still way too furry. I ended up giving it a haircut and blocking it as best I could – it didn’t turn out that bad just not what I had imagined…

Here’s a pic of it before it was felted:

and here's some pics of after:

I'll probably post the pattern for it in my next post (I'm gonna try to write it up now but if I don't get it done before my lunch is up I'll finish it tomorrow)