Bowls (upside down hats)

W. and E. have were born one week apart exactly- I do believe their moms met in the hospital? Or is that an urban myth? Hmmmm, it works. Every year we seem to celebrate the two birthdays together. W's mom said this year I have an honourary August birthday. (April sounds like August).
This year I wanted to make presents, something knitted and fun. After some failed experiments I decided to make felted bowls. Without a pattern of course, as if my preference. I know how to make hats, and decided a bowl was just an upside down hat.

This is true. But still, I went through one felted experimental disaster and several wrongly knitted bowls before coming up with these two beauties. Experimental disaster was another project I attempted, a felted bag. It worked fine, but shrunk vertically more than horizontally. Ok, so I have to make the bowl almost the width I want, but twice as deep.

This was fine, except I got impatient (so not surprising) and didn't knit a few deep enough. Here is a picture of the red bowl before it was felted. I used size 6 kneedles and lopi wool. I cast on about 50 stitches. I knit only about 12 rows before starting to decrease. The hat was about half its depth at this point. I decreased the next row one decrease every 10th stitch (decrease on 10). The next row I decrease every 9th, 8th, etc. until I have about 2 stitches between every decrease. I then loop the thread through the last row and pull tight to form the bottom of the bowl.

The green bowl was using a dk weight wool, but I didn't count stitches. I like the green bowl in that the felt feels really nice, but the lopi gives the red bowl much more ridge sides.

The green bowl had to be run through twice in the washer on hot/cold cycle, while it took 4 washes for the red bowl until I thought it was felted enough. I then sewed little vortices in the bottom of each using some dyed roving. My time in Arizona made me really fall for the vortex symbol (even though me the scientist does not quite believe in the power of the vortex, sigh). That's all. My honey is leaving for 3-4 weeks to work in the Kootenays where he will be welding. I hate it when we are apart for so long. But anyway, I have lots to blog about (like the wine touring we did with P. and J.- 8 wineries in 1 day!) so that will keep me busy.