Phew!

After some (admittedly very little) thought, I decided to felt my Booga Bag by hand. It was more out of curiosity than anything else, to see the felting (fulling would be more accurate, I suppose) process happen before my very eyes. I also feel that seeing as I had knit the bag by hand to felt it in a machine would have been wrong somehow, like knitting on a machine. Call me strange, but to my eyes if you are going to start using a machine to knit something, you may as well just buy a ready made one from a shop. But anyway, I digress.

Before: See the bag clashing horribly with my carpet.












I prepared a bowl of very hot water (not sure about the actual temperature, but I could still put my gloved hand into it ok) with some soapflakes and another of cold water.















Putting in my bag for the first time was a little nerve wracking, but after a while I was pummelling and kneading away merrily.Every few minutes I took the bag (and cord, of course) out of the hot water and dunked it into the cold water. Apparently this shocks the fibres and helps the process happen more quickly.














After a while, I could definitely tell that things were happening...my back was starting to ache a bit and a flood was developing nicely on the counter.














At last, after an hour (yes, really!) and about three top ups with hot water from the kettle, I was satisfied with the result and rinsed the bag three times in cold water.














After rinsing, I rolled the bag up in a towel and squashed it to get the excess water out, put it over a covered box to block and had a nice sit down with a bottle of beer :)