liadethornegge

At the Aros Fencing Camp I started knitting a flat cap according to Mistress Helwig's instructions. I finished it in the last week, and the only thing missing was the felting, or fulling rather. I made one in red using six whole skeins of the yarn and it turned out rather large.

Yesterday I went over to Helwig's place to sew and hang out, and she had the right detergent to do machine fulling so we threw the red flat cap into the washing machine on 60 degrees. When it came out it was still rather larger than needful and not as fulled as I wanted it, so we returned it to the machine and it went through again and after the second cycle it came out pretty nice!

I ironed it, and then we put it on a marble-top table underneath six volumes of an encyclopedia to make it nice and even.

My very kind Laurel also finished for me a knitted flat cap in a grey tone which wishes it was black (as per my request) and threw that in the machine as well. It only needed to be washed once to achieve an even higher degree of fulling than did the red one. Our theory is that the black yarn was much less treated than the red. The dyeing process probably battered the former a bit more, and the dark grey may well be a natural color, so took less effort to full.

I ironed that one as well, and added that to the stack out on the marble-top table.

So I went to a craft day with one almost finished flat cap and came away with two entirely finished ones!

I also finished the shirt for Lord Edricus, and got a few stitches nearer on finishing my own cotton/linen blend summer shirt. *sigh* But it was so boring I nearly died, despite having True Blood to watch.