Felting woes

Joe and I live in an apartment without washer or dryer. This has always been a pain as far as I am concerned, but never more so than now. I have a felting thing going. I started working on a Booga Bag with Patton's SWS in the color way plum, and it needs to be felted. I could do it by hand, but it would probably take me a day of scrubbing and rubbing to get it done, and to be honest I have neither the stamina nor the time for that. But using the complex laundry room is costly (1.65 a pop!) and time consuming, especially if the bag takes four or five turns in the machine.
I have no idea where this felting kick comes from, but it's got a fierce hold on me. I already have my next few projects lined up, a Sophie bag, a Lopi tote, and a free form knitting bag. Unless my Booga doesn't turn out well, of course. I modified the pattern, that is to say I want the bag to be more rectangular bottom wise, and not as high. So I cast on 48 stitches, knit 48 rows, and will knit only the 68 rows in the round that the pattern dictates. I will of course post pictures once it's done.

The Dollar and a Half cardigan is slow going at the moment, I am working on the sleeves right now but I am too psyched about my felting thing to sit down and finish it. I have read about so many problems with this pattern, nobody likes the sleeves and the original pattern in Interweave Knits actually got the two front panels mixed up. The needles need to be changed to two sizes smaller for the reversed stockinette panels or there will be major puffiness that even extreme blocking won't fix. Needless to say, if you knit it in 100% acrylic like I am doing, there is no way you can block it anyway. I washed the back and the left front panel and pinned it down to the measurements described while it dried, but it already looks like it's bunching up again. Oh well, if it turns out to be a disaster it will have been a good lesson, and not a very expensive one.
Live and learn! I so wish I had the cash to knit only with excellent material like wool, silk, bamboo, alpaca, mohair, and the like. But as long as Joe is in charge (which will be forever hehe) that is just not going to happen.

My first pair of socks!

I finished my first pair of socks last night. I used this absolutely awesome tutorial: Silver's sock tutorial . I'm convinced anyone can knit a pair of decent looking socks using Silver's instructions! I have no idea who she is, I found the tutorial through my knitting forum on www.knittinghelp.com, but I am mighty grateful to her and I highly recommend her tutorial to anyone who wants to knit socks but is afraid to try.
The pictures are pretty bad, for which I apologize, but they were taken with my cell phone. We went to the Ecotarium in Worcester, MA on the weekend and Joe didn't bring our digital camera in from the car after that. Now he's at work and I am home, hence the use of the cell phone camera.


By the way, the Ecotarium was interesting except for an absolutely ghastly polar bear exhibit with one lonely polar bear in it. Horrible, horrible, horrible. I know polar bears are solitary by nature, but they usually roam across miles of territory instead of being dumped in a concrete pit where the paint is peeling off and where there is not nearly enough room to swim around. It's criminal.