FO – adinkra bag

In between shoveling snow this weekend I finished the adinkra bag. Here it is before felting (under incandescent lights in the living room),

… and after about three 12-minute cycles of small hot wash all alone in the washing machine (under the fluorescent light in the cellar):

It shrunk from about 8 1/2 inches wide down to 7 1/2, and more than that proportionally in height, and got lots firmer and nice and felty. Also, I really don’t think it wants to curl at the top any more. This picture was taken as soon as it came out of the spin dry cycle, and I don’t know for sure how it will be when it’s dry.

Again, the yarn was Cascade 220. The saleswoman at Black Sheep Knitting Co. said it would felt, but I wasn’t sure she was directing me specifically to wool that would felt as opposed to just “aw, get some wool, it’ll felt, all this section is wool.”

This project was kind of a milestone for me:

* First intarsia project. I like doing it fine. I’ll look more seriously at Kaffee Fasset books if I see them on markdown in the future. Maybe at full price, even. Maybe not.
* First i-cord. It really is as easy as people say. I did this on 2 DPNs. I tried some on a knitting spool I had made a couple of years ago but never really used, also, to compare how fast the different techniques were. The spool knitting was more uniform, except for one really bad spot. I couldn’t decide which was faster. The trouble with the spool is that you can’t see what you’ve done until you’ve done three more inches.
* First successful felting. I’m a believer.