Thank you for joining me for today’s adventure in the continuing drama of As the Wool Felts.

Lesson 3 – Felting time is unpredictable.

My third lesson learned is that it is difficult to predict exact felting time. Some yarns felt relatively quickly but others take a bit of effort. Here are the times that it took to thoroughly felt my samples.

(Note:I only counted agitation time in the hot water pan. I ignored the 30 seconds spent in the rinse pan as well as the few seconds spent transferring from one pan to another. All times were calculated in increments of 3 minutes so the exact felting time might be a minute or two less than the time recorded.)

Rose: 9 minutes
Blue: 12 minutes
Cream: 15 minutes
Yellow: 18 minutes

In general, the darker colors felted quicker than the lighter ones. It took twice as long to felt the cream sample as the rose one even though both were the same brand of yarn and presumably the same quality of wool.
I also compared the felting time for a completed hat in Cascade 220. It was felted in about 10 minutes so its felting time was comparable to the blue Lion Brand sample but significantly shorter than the yellow Cascade 220 sample. This gives credibility to the theory that darker colors felt faster. I intend to make a color to color comparison of one brand of wool next time I have a chance to go shopping.

Stay tuned for the final chapter in the continuing drama of As the Wool Shrinks…