Felting

I've always admired Dadaya's felted and embroidered mittens. Although, I have no idea if they were knitted then felted or felted straight from wool batt. After finding an excellent tutorial on felting from batt I thought I'd give it a go. A friend let me know that I could easily find wool batt at the local farmer's market. (I conveniently live less than a block from it, but I usually spend the morning avoiding the crowd). So I bought a half a pound of the wool batt and got going.

Scooter is "helping" me by sitting on the batt.

I followed the instructions and made a resist out of foam. Then I put four layers of batt above and below it.

Ready to Felt

After two hours of struggling and making a giant lake in the kitchen, I had these.

Felted

I spent another hour felting them a bit better. Unfortunately they were a bit thin in places and a little tight around the wrists.

Thin Mitts

On my second attempt I made the resist bigger and used six layers of batt in order to rid myself of the pesky holes. The result is what I like to call the Oven Mitts.

Oven Mitts

Not quite as cute as the first pair.

I have decided to see if I can get a better result by knitting some mittens, then felting them. So today I bought some wool at the farmers market.

Corriedale Wool

I got the wool from the same vendor I got the batt from. Yolo Wool Mill. I hope this attempt goes a bit better.

Scooter hopes the felting goes well too.