Adventures in felting

Just after binding off, before felting

Inside of coasters before felting

I finished the Fair Isle coasters!!!  I wove in the ends and then threw then in the washer to felt them.  This is the first time I've felted something and I used knitty's felting article as a guide.  The felting seemed to go fine, though I'm still not sure if I did enough.  I don't have a picture of the finished project to go by, so in that sense I "winged" the felting.  Once I was done with the felting, I went ahead and cut the coasters apart.  

This was another first for me - cutting a project that I diligently knit.  Eck!  But it all seems to have turned out alright.  I was suppose to finger felt the edges, though I wasn't sure exactly how to do that either.  Basically I just tried rubbing the edges a bit and while it probably needs more felting at the edge, I figured that it was good enough for now.  I then stretch them all this way and that and they are currently drying. 

The outside after felting

The inside after felting

 The Details:

These were knit using Cascade Yarns 220 Wool on a size 4, 24" circular needle.  I used 14 g of the cream color and 25 g of the blue color.  The pattern is a basic "seeding" pattern that is commonly used on the palm of mittens or gloves - at least that is what I was told! 

This pattern/packet I got also has a more advanced pattern called a "Norwegian Star" and can use up to 7 different colors.  I'm thinking about attempting the advanced pattern, but I'm not sure I'm up for using 7 colors.  Maybe I could just like 3 or 4? If I knit that, then I'd be knitting essentially the same thing again - it would become coasters.

Right - front side of coasters; Left - backside of coasters

 My other idea is to knit the Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang.  These claim to be easy and a good project for beginner colorwork knitters.  The only thing holding me back from knitting these is that I probably need to knit the size medium, but I don't have a set of 3.00 DPNs (double point needs).  Also, I wasn't planning on gauge swatching, but perhaps that would be a big mistake.  The other option is to use the size 2 DPNs that I have and just cast on for the medium size.