Gearing Up for Week 3!

As I promised the "advanced group" in the lunchtime knitting class, I'm introducing our class project this week. I've been knitting bits and pieces all weekend and hope that the kids will find the magic of felting as interesting as I do!

The basic premise is that this:



Plus this:



Equals this:



(Ignore the rather poor finishing. I was racing the clock last night, felting at a furious rate and I didn't have much time to stretch and block the finished object to more elegant proportions. That said, I'm just trying to demonstrate some of the properties of felted objects: the sturdiness of the fabric and the fact that it can be cut without ravelling.

Here is another before and after sample:



I'm going to let the kids acquire their own needles for this project. I was willing to purchase a boat-load of the starter needes and lend them out to the class, figuring that I'll reuse them if I offer the class next year, but I really don't want to invest $$ in a pile of fat needles. (The local "big box" store offers suitable needles for less than $3 Canadian, so it shouldn't prove to be a barrier to any of the students.)

On the other hand, feltable yarn is tough to find in junior department stores and I do have a large supply of leftovers from various projects, so I will supply that for the class. I'm planning to let the kids rummage through the bits and pieces in my "feltable yarn" box and use any combination of colours they find pleasing. The nice thing about felted projects is that you can just change colours by tying knots! The pencil case I made as a demo item weighs 65 grams, so I'll bring in the kitchen scale next week and set everyone up with 75 grams of whatever!

BTW, my hired-gun is nursing a cold and a sick pup today, so we'll be short staffed. Your continued positive knitting thoughts would be appreciated!