Second cat needs second bowl. First cat Hector choosed the zigzag patterned nest and never let second cat Yoda in.
So I decided to felt some sort of cave.
250 g of the off-white yarn build the bottom, 200g of the petrol colored yarn form the side. 100 g Feltro went into transition of the roof. All yarns for the roof were mixed from stash yarns of all kind from lace leftovers to rests of alpaca and pure wool. One of the yarns was not felting at all and forms tiny loops. I mixed 5-6 strands.

I worked in garter, my experience is that this method is felting more densely.

And: even if some of my readers don’t want to read it any more: knit as loosely as possible, I recommend 8mm needles as a lower limit for yarns with 100m / 100g. The smaller the needle the less space the yarn has for felting.

As you might see at the cocoon, I started too late closing the opening so that after drying I formed a conopy and will call this a design element.

Short recipe for knitting (no, I don’t write a pattern):

• knit in the round, purl every second round
• cast on 8 sts in your prefered method, arrange on 4 DPNs
• double each stitch
• purl
• increase 8 sts evenly in every second round until you’ll have a circle which is 40% more than your intended diameter (shrinking factor is mostly 35 - 45%)
• change to circular needles when necessary
• for the cave opening decrease one-eighth of the stitches and work in rows (garter: knit every row). Really: only one-eighth. I did more and it is too wide, what causes difficulties in closing the opening.
• work 16 - 20 rows without increasing
• decrease 7 stitches evenly spread over the row and work 5 rows without decreasing. At the same time increase 1 st on each side of every second row for a bowed opening of the cave.
• work this for 6 times.
• decrease 7 stitches evenly spread over the row and work 3 rows without decreasing. At the same time increase 1 st on each side of every second row for a bowed opening of the cave.
• work this for 5 times.
• count your stitches without the increased sts for the opening. Divide by seven. The result is the eighth part you need for closing the opening. You already increased 11 sts on each side of the opening (22 alltogether). Now substract 22sts from the result of the division by seven and you get the number of sts you have to cast on to close the cave opening.
• Now work in rounds.
• Decrease 8 stitches evenly spread over the round and work 3 rounds without decreasing. Do so for 6 times.
• Decrease 8 stitches evenly spread over the round every other row until you have nothing more to decrease.
• feel free to work turrets or other forms of the roof. I was glad having enough yarn so I’m content with the finish
• Before drying I stuffed the cocoon with bubble wrap and formed the roof with towels to stay in the desired shape.

What I dislike is whimpering about not having a top-loader washing machine for felting.
I never had one. No need to open the machine all the time to look whether the thingie has shrunk or not.
I always use the full 60-degrees (Celsius) washing-cycle with an old pair of rubber-soled canvas shoes and never failed. Give it a try!
If I want to get a fabric with special measurements I’ll work a swatch and felt it with my regular washing. Then I figure out the shrinking factor and calculate the sts and rows/round.