Stress gives my knitting consistent tension

[kaitou]

I've been working my way though my beginning knitting book, dutifully trying each project that teaches me a new technique, whether I WANTED a shawl or not. So the latest thing was to learn how to decrease by making a felted purse. For the most part it went off without a hitch. Decreasing was really easy to learn, and the halves of the purse came off without a hitch. Then, since the example purse was supposed to have flowers (example purse was green with pink flowers) I decided to make leaves instead. The leaves came out really well even though I did them without any sort of pattern at all.





And then I tried to felt it.
>.<
It didn't go so well...



Anyone know a fashion forward 3 year old? I let it felt in the hot water too long. Which really, I'm not too surprised. Since this is my first time, I didn't really have a baseline as to 'when are the stitches felted' and probably let it go 5-7 minutes longer than necessary. I did my best to stretch it back out, but this was the best I could do. It's a shame really, besides the size it came out really well. You can't even see the seam where I sewed the two halves together.

Oh well. *sigh* Better luck next time.

Comments

[m-steelgrave.livejournal.com]

Because if you don't have purling down, the whole "Dec 1 st at neck edge every 2nd row 8(5,2) times. Then dec 1 at neck edge every 4th row. At the same time, when piece measures 7 inches...."

Oh my God, that looks frighteningly like a word problem in my eighth grade math book. I would SO cry. Most of my scant number of knitting lessons have been with my mom or grandma, whose instructions are something like, "Do this now. No, I don't know why. Just do it."

And pretty is an excellent motivator. ^_^