Knit a felted purse?

[Umberella]

Anyone have any first-hand knowledge on how to make a felted purse from beginning to end? crying
I just knit a purse with wool yarn and now I'm reading that besides knitting it larger so it will shrink, I was supposed to knit the purse on larger needles so the whole thing shrinks down and fills in the holes. I don't mind starting over, I'm just trying to get a large purse that's nice and felted out of it.  

[NightRainSpirit]

Umberella

Anyone have any first-hand knowledge on how to make a felted purse from beginning to end? crying
I just knit a purse with wool yarn and now I'm reading that besides knitting it larger so it will shrink, I was supposed to knit the purse on larger needles so the whole thing shrinks down and fills in the holes. I don't mind starting over, I'm just trying to get a large purse that's nice and felted out of it.

3nodding Yep, thats right =^-^= I saw a pretty felted purse kinda bag based on fall colors that I wish i could make.  

[enlith]

I also understand that felting works better if you use larger needles than you otherwise might, since the hot water gets to more of the yarn where the fibers are mostly likely to rub against/adhere to each other.  

[Catcheen]

Bigger needles, and a looser weave, yep. It's so the fibers can move more freely and lock into place better durring agitation. The purse will shrink more height-wise than lengthwise, so knit some extra rows up top so you don't get a squashy bag. (Leaned from first hand experience *cough*)

In case anyone's interested: How felting works

Hot water opens the wool fibers up. For mental imagery purposes, imagine a straight piece of fiber opening into a velcro hook. The agitation rubs those little hooks together and has them lock together creating a big mess of all these little hooks getting knotted up in other hooks. Since you knit so openly, when the hooks from one strand grab the hooks from another strand, it brings it closer, thus shrinking the fabric and creating little to no stitch deffinition. Now that everything's all knotted and hooked together, the cold water rinse will shock the fibers into closing. Kind of like shrinkwrap, but for mental imagry purposes, let's say it's like a padlock. There you have a felted object. If the fibers didn't lock as closely as you like, you can re-felt by re-doing the cycle. Open the fibers up, rub them together even more, lock them into place.

This process is easier to see and visualize if you hand felt something in the sink rather than use the washing machine.  

[enlith]

sounds good. I've got some wool and I'm going to try it... sometime... I probably won't get to it until this summer, but when I do I'll let y'all know how it comes out!  

[CiciPickPick]

Also, make sure that the washing machine you use to felt is pretty heavy duty otherwise it's a bit of a pain in the butt to run the bag through several times... Of course, if you've got patience I suppose it's not a big deal. I just know my mom experienced a little frustration when using her washing machine because her bags didn't fully felt the first time through. Good Luck!!!