I haven’t posted in a while because I was waiting for the arrival of some Sirdar Donegal Tweed wool to knit a bear. And not just any bear, this one, who we’ve christened Snodgrass!

My original intention was to sell him once complete, but that is not going to happen. What is it with bears that they are so hard to get rid of! But maybe the next one I knit will be put up for adoption, maybe if I phrase it like that, he won’t realise he’s being sold!!

That is a bit of an obvious title for my latest knitting project…a pink mouse!

Our pet dog Big Al seems to have taken a liking to Pinkie and my craft chair, but they do look so cute! I’ve just bought a whole stash of wool, now I can’t decide what to knit next!

After the last felting fiasco, I wondered if there was a quick and easy way to test yarn for felting, especially if you no longer have the labels available.

I found this method on Let’s Get Knitting.

Use this simple test to identify ‘feltable’ yarns:

1. Cut a short length of yarn from your ball or cone. Try 50 cms (18 inches) to start with.

2. Gather the yarn into a clump and roll it round between the palms of your hands to form a loose ball.

3. Add a small amount of any liquid hand wash soap to the ball and some warm water.

4. Roll and knead the ball of yarn between your palms, rinsing off any surplus soap as you go along.

5. Keep on rolling and kneading until the ball begins to stick together – approximately 5 or 10 minutes.

6. If the fibres in the yarn don’t want to stick together after this time, then it’s probably not a suitable yarn to use for felting.

I thought I’d knit a nice felted rose using the short row method. So using real wool I knitted a nice twirly length, twisted it into a rose shape, tied in the loose ends, secured it and prepared to felt.

Anyone who’s felted will know that at first the work goes really floppy and expands all over the place. Don’t panic, it does shrink…but this didn’t, it just got floppier! So I tried shock tactics, hot water, cold water, hot water, more agitating, it just didn’t want to know. I had to admit defeat, this wool was not going to felt.

I rinsed the rose out, and returned to my crafting chair and slumped down sulking. Then I looked at the wool I’d used and saw that dreaded word SUPERWASH aarrgh!!!!

Here’s what happens if you try to felt SUPERWASH wool, my advice is…don’t!

I’ve been experimenting with felting. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s don’t buy cheap wool, one ball felted ok, the other just went limp!

I splashed out and bought some Twilleys Freedom Spirit wool which comes in the most delicious multi-colours imaginable! I then followed the instructions for fulling wool as it seemed pathetic putting a tiny sample piece into the washing machine. And with a front loader, it’s not that easy to control what is going on.

So in a washing up bowl and put some pure soap flakes, and almost boiling water, swished it around then put my knitting in and swished some more. I swished, squeezed, pummelled, put it on the draining board and using the ridges, rubbed it back and forth. Then I rinsed it out in cold water and just for good measure, did some more swishing, squeezing and pummelling!

It actually didn’t take that long and was great fun, and here is the finished article. Yes I know it’s tiny, it was going to be a bowl but ended up being a pin tray. And it wasn’t because I over-fulled, it was because I was impatient to see the results and stopped knitting!