Spinning Ginny: Felting Alpaca is like doing a science experiement #knitting #spinning #New #Listing

On Wednesday, I finally finished a project I started for my mom back in the fall. I was working on trying to felt it and since I've never felted alpaca before, it was going to be a science experiment for me. I know that you can felt things in the washer and I've tried that, before with my old washer and found that the water doesn't get hot enough (it was one of those energy efficient washers). I've felted thing in boiling hot water before and found that it works, only it takes a long time and you have to keep stirring and lifting up your item to see if its showing signs of felting.

Well, I thought that I'd trying the boiling technique first. So I brought some water to boil with a little bit of detergent in it. Then I put this Handspun - Dyed - Knitted - Alpaca - Bag into the boiling water. I stirred and lifted for 30 minutes, I saw what looked like something was starting to happen, but the bag was still huge. I added another 30 minutes and continued stirring and lifting, not much more was happening. I continued repeating the process, for 3 more hours, some felting was happening but not enough to really make difference.

Then I thought, hey why not try putting it into the dryer (oh I know what your probably thinking), but it didn't do much of anything to it at all. I was beginning to get discouraged! So I took to https://www.youtube.com/ and looked up felting bags. The only thing I found was something that talked about using the washing machine again. I was very skeptical about giving this a try, but did and was very impressed that it was starting to work. Then on Thursday morning I tried again and finally it to felt up, just the way I was wanting it too! Well, here it is all dry and having its debut!