Bedouin Bag final felting

After Nishaya brought in her Bedouin Bag, I realized that mine was not finished felting.  I had run it through the regular cycle once, but not the rinse.  It was felted, certainly, but not enough.  See how much bigger mine on the right is.

Nishaya's Bedouin Bag in three colors

So I went home and put mine through another cycle.  I pulled it out of the machine before the first spin started because I didn't want it to adopt some twisted shape as it spun, so after the water had drained from the machine, I laid the bag in against the wall of the tub and let it spin.  When the spin was nearly over, I opened the machine and pulled the bag out.  It was nearly dry and quite firmly felted.  Just for fun I let the bag go through the rinse cycle and repeated the spin process with the bag against the wall.  It hadn't felted any further, but it looked smaller and more manageable.

The additional handles arrived Friday, and I put them on my bag, as well as the mechanical snap closure that I decided I really did want after all.  (I have a few in stock if you think you would like one on yours as well.

Here are the specs of this one - I used the Berries colorway of Shepherd's Wool, made the smallest size, and attached the 26" Jul handles so that the circle of the handle (at the top) is just above the top of the bag, and the bottom of the handle tabs is just above the first welt.

I learn something with every project, which is as it should be.  I've put together some thoughts/lessons learned from this project which I will post soon.