Why On Earth Anybody Felts Intarsia?

One review I read of Nicky Epstein's felted intarsia bag asked why anyone would felt their knitting after doing such intricate colorwork.

I now know the answer.

In real intarsia I would have been forced to weave in all the ends I had left over. By felting it, I got to be lazy and trim them all off of the halfway felted bag. This is the disaster that I had on my hands after the first run through the washer.


This is how much better it looked after I trimmed it. I think that by doing it between washings I nailed it. The ends were secure enough to trim, but the second wash hid the spots that were trimmed.


Again, this is why you felt the tremendously difficult intarsia. It's so you don't bang your head against the wall when you're trying to weave approximately 8,469 ends in. This is the pile of stuff I trimmed of the bag. You know, the stuff I would have woven.


The bag is finished. I forgot to take a picture of it before I wrapped it up for Christmas. It came out pretty well considering I ran out of brown yarn and started taking apart the I-cord, then cut it way down after it was felted because it was humongous, then sewed it by hand (you know how I feel about that!). I'm even considering using the leftover pink yarn for some kind of Valentine's Day felted something-or-other. We'll see how that goes.