Moebius Basket

Completed: December 2007

Pattern: Felted Moebius Basket, A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool #123 (100% wool, 2 x 85g skeins (158yds each), held double-stranded

Notes: I really like the concept of moebius knitting, and I'm glad I learned it. And I also really like the resulting basket--don't get me wrong! But the intriguing aspects of this technique are not really evident in the basket itself. Sure, you could point out that it's all one continuous surface to the recipient. Sure, you could even add some decorative i-cord as the author suggests. But really, you could also just knit a regular bowl and attach a handle to it, giving a half-twist to the handle. And after you felt it, it would look pretty much the same. So is it really worth it to knit this particular project in this way? Only if you want to enjoy the process, I think, and not necessarily for the product itself.

Here's another thing I learned while doing this project:
1. Murphy's Law: If you spend a lot of time knitting a sweater on small needles or if you use expensive designer yarn, your project will get accidentally felted, but
2. The corollary is that if you are trying to felt something that had been knit with yarn that says "perfect for felting" right there on the label, it retains its stitch definition even after the 3rd vigorous washing.

I think the main reason I had trouble felting this is because my front-load washing machine just doesn't agitate things enough. So I decided instead to just take the sopping mess of a basket and plunge it into the dryer. Aaahh! Now that did the trick! So from now on, I'm going to felt in my dryer instead of trying to do it in the washing machine.