Felted firepit cover

Remember this? It grew to this -

And finally this monstrosity, otherwise known as a firepit cover.

What is it you ask? It's the largest Noni adventure bag. Boy this thing is huge! Not too much to the construction of it - a basic bag, no shaping or anything. Add some little strap tabs, knit some more and then an 8-stitch I-cord/strap to be attached later. I'm hoping to felt it today. The pattern called for 9 skeins of Cascade 220, I only used 8. I was right on gauge, so I suspect that the designer possibly only used a small portion of the last skein. I ended up with about 15" of yarn at the end. That's the little squiglet you see on the bag here:I wanted to felt it last week as soon as I had cast off, so I asked the boys (husband and son) if they had any jeans that needed to be washed. They(wanting to know what ulterior motives I might have with their pant wear of choice) warily asked "Why...?" Turns out they really don't appreciate my taking their jeans and washing them in hot water for 20 minutes or so. It tends to shrink them especially lengthwise. So my plan is to buy two pairs of jeans at value village today and those will be my felting jeans.

Funny felting story. I don't felt with towels anymore after Christmas Eve, about two years ago. See, I had made this really cute purse for my niece Heather for Christmas, and the last step was felting. No jeans were to be had, so I went and grabbed a couple of towels and proceeded on my merry way. I had used Mountain Colors Mountain Goat, it felted beautifully and it was all good. Until. Yep, until I took it out and noticed a few little lint-y nubbins from the towel. Okay, I figured I'd just pick those out when it was all dry. Well, as the bag dried some more, many more towel nubbins became apparent. Like the body of the bag and the strap were absolutely covered. Do you have any idea how long it takes to pick all of those out with tweezers? Wow. No more towels for me. Now I know I should use a zippered pillow cover or lingerie bag, but I don't most of the time. Everytime I teach a felting class though, I do tell this story and recommend some sort of case or whatnot. So I'm a jeans girl.

I'll post a picture when it's done with the zipper sewn in and the straps attached.