It's a Dumpling Bag

Rachel of the Knit Cents podcast has an LAL for the month of May. LAL means Learn Along. The concept is to learn something new and share. Knit Cents is becoming one of my favorite podcasts. Rachel has a pleasant voice and the show is informative as well. I chose one knitting theme and one less-knitting theme.

For My Learn Along...

1. Knit different spherical shapes.
2. Learn more about my two
   cameras and Adobe Bridge.
   Since much of my photography is for my blog and Ravelry, this is the less-knitting related.

Dumpling Bag by Sharon Dreifuss has been in my queue for a while. It is in the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits. I'm not sure how often I will actually use this bag but it is spherical so it seemed like a good time to try it. It only took a few hours to knit and an hour or so to embroider. For the embroidery I used handspun and hand-dyed wool that I bought ages ago.

Knitting spheres turned into a lesson on felting wool as well. I've not been very successful with felting in the past. In the two weeks that I have been felting I've learned a few things.

1. Felting works best for me when I don't care what size the end result is.
2. My front loading machine DOES work for felting. Yeah!
3. My favorite wool for felting is Paton's Wool Classic. This is an inexpensive wool that I bought on sale at a chain store. This wool was actually in my stash and somewhat of a buyer's remorse issue so I am thrilled that it works well for felting. It only took one time through my front loader and the stitch definition was gone. I put the bag in a pillow case with a few tennis balls. An old pair of jeans was added to the wash, outside of the pillowcase. I used a little bit of Tide.
4. Hot water, heavy cycle.
5. Try not to mix wools in a project. They felt at different rates and that can affect the product. I actually learned this while knitting Baby's First Ball which will come up soon.

Modifications to pattern:

• Eliminated the rings on the handles. Just looped the long handle through the little loop.
• Made the long handle 22" instead of 13".

I have since made a larger version of the Dumpling Bag which will be photographed soon.

This was a fun, quick project and would make a great gift for a younger person.