The Hollyhock Blog

Nothing, Nada, Zip, Zilch!  I didn’t even get one puny pair of mittens knit last week for charity.   I will do better this week!

I did get the red mittens felted.  This is a testimony to dyeing with Kool-Aid.  To felt the mittens, I put a big pot of water on my stove and heated to nearly boiling, added that to the hottest tap water I could get in my wash machine, added detergent (not gentle Aquilaun like I recommend for alpaca) and agitated the bejeebers out of those poor mittens for at least 15 minutes.  This is NOT the care I suggest be given to alpaca products – especially those dyed deep, dark colors.   But here is the set:

Red set

The felting gives the mittens a fuzziness the wrist warmers and scarf don’t have, so they do look a little different.  And they did fade some – the water was pink.  But I was amazed at how little they faded – since I did not think of that possibility when I started the set (duh!)