A Path of Destruction

It's been a bad evening. Well. I suppose I should just show you.


That's my trash can. In case you can't puzzle out what exactly you're looking at, that's the Poppies swatch, Georgina, and a squished Mountain Dew bottle. I was right. The neck was in the wrong place (off by over an inch. How in HELL did I manage that, and then knit three inches without noticing? I'm blaming all those spots). And the Poppies swatch kept looking worse, the more I knit on it. So. Bye-bye. I thought of ripping out Georgina and re-using the yarn, but the way I'd hacked it up, knitting it in, it didn't seem worth it. Into the trash it went.

Oh, and the instant gratification project? I'm not gratified.

I finished it today.

It is the French Market Bag from Knitty. Other than adding on a few rows to the handles, it's knit as the pattern is written... the pattern's nice, cleary written, and an easy knit. What happened next is not the author's fault. (Sounds suitably ominous, doesn't it?)

I'm going to blow the suspense and say that previously, I have only done one felted knit project, and I trashed it. (I wanted a slightly felted shawl. I got a place mat. The cat currently sleeps on it.)

Anyway. So I threw it in the washing machine on 'extra small load' and 'hot' and 'heavy duty agitation' and set it for fifteen minutes, figuring, how much can something felt in fifteen minutes? (Clearly, I am a moron.) The steam rolling out of the washer as it filled should have given me some clue. But NO. Off I toddle into the house to have a snack. Fifteen minutes later, I was back, and pulled out.... THIS:

We had another felting fiasco on our hands. I rinsed everything off, hung it to dry, and this evening surveyed the damage:

The husbeast, with his usual gift for a horrible phrase, asked, "You knit a bowling ball cozy?" I'm thinking it looks more like a sports bra with the holes in the wrong place.

So far as I can tell, I did only two things right. I used a strainer to skim off the fibers in the washing machine before spinning out the water, so that they wouldn't clog the pump and burn it out. (That REALLY would have topped the day, wouldn't it?) And, before felting, I thought this was a fine opportunity to create a gauge swatch, so I marked off a twenty row by twenty stitch square on the bag. So now I can repeat this effect, if I ever lose my mind and want to do it again. In case I want to make, oh, I don't know, body armor.

I'm down to one project. The Tax sweater. I'm afraid to touch it.