felting the furniture.

Presenting my first use of knitting as a substitute for furniture upholstering:


Yes, I did it again. I felted! This was actually knit in the round, even though it looks like a square. It was supposed to be a kitty bed, but for the past couple of months it has been an ottoman cozy, so after my fun felting experience this past week, I decided to felt this one too, and mold it directly to the ottoman:


The yarn I used felted at two different rates. The araucania wool felted nicely after the second hot cycle, but it took a couple more for the noro kureyon wool to felt. And even at that, it only slightly felted. Total hot/cold cycles: 5.

After laying a sheet of plastic over to top of the ottoman, I put down some miracle dry cloth, then stretched the felted knit over the top of it. After I was satisfied with the shape, I put it by the front window for some sun. In the pictures above, it was dry enough to remove the plastic and cloth, but I kept it by the window to dry it out a little more.

Look at the before pic! As you can tell, it started out huge. The hot/cold felting cycles really helped to shrink it to fit around the ottoman so perfectly!

Modeling credit: Kitty #1 shows you how the kitty bed I presented last week always has a kitty in it!

Pattern: This started out as Wendy's kitty bed, but then I added an extra increase and many, many more rows, and used twice as much yarn. As you can see in the before picture, it turned out huge! I like to think of it as an upside-down kitty bed.

Yarn used: Noro Kureyon, color 126, and
Araucania Nature Wool for the solid color edges (two strands held together).