1/3/10 So I am now finished! I liked the way the dye worked out slightly variegated. I filled the pouf with a mixture of towels and batting. I could sort of see the batting, so I took a brown sheet and sewed a casing for the batting. The towels give it a bit of firmness and stability, which helps! Hand photo is there for size reference.

How I did it:

Materials: 90mm knitting needles, 8 pounds of corridale top wool roving, dye, gloves, and your fingers

Step 1: Create yarn by felting wool roving into long ropes. Between each ball, carefully felt new wool to old wool. As I worked, I wrapped the wool around an open hanger that I got from Container Store. See the link below for tips on felting ropes. I would recommend rubber gloves with texture because I found it felted faster that way.

Step 2: Once all 8 balls have been felted, rinse with warm water. Then dye wool with the Jacquard Brown dye following instructions. I used 4 containers of the acid dye, but you might be able to get away with 3.

Step 3: KNIT!

Pattern follows:

Cast on 12 (if you can, provisional cast on, as you will undo these stitches later.)

Row 1: K 12
Row 2: K 9, W&T
Row 3: K 6, W&T
Row 4: K 5, W&T
Row 5: K 4, W&T
Row 6: K 5, W&T
Row 7: K 6, W&T
Row 8: K 9 to end of row
Row 9: Knit back across row (K 12)

Repeat this pattern until you near the end of your yarn. I think I repeated this pattern about 9 times around. Once you hit your last row 9, return to your cast on stitches and undo your cast on to reveal 12 live stitches. Kitchner stitch to complete bind off and create a complete circle!

I ended up having a strand of yarn on the top and on the bottom so conveniently I didn’t have to cut any yarn to sew up the top and the bottom.

Voila!

12/30 I’ve basically completely revamped whatever pattern there was… Instead I am doing a W&T style, to create a circle. I decided that if I didn’t reduce the number of stitches along the edges, I’d never be able to close the thing. If this ends up working I’ll post the changes.

11/12 So I haven’t started to knit this project yet, but I’m super excited about it, so I have to post something. 8lbs of roving arrived in the post today. Here’s the plan: felt up roving into long ropes. There is a good tutorial here.

Once that’s done the long rope will be submerged in brown jacquard dye - I can’t imagine using the ecru color for the pouf - it’ll be dirty in minutes. Haven’t figured out how to do the seaming with such a large amount of wool-don’t think they make tapestry needles that large! Probably going to all be done with my fingers…

I purchased an amazing set of 35mm knitting needles from land of the alpacas that they custom make. These ended up being too small and I made my own needles that were about 90mm round in circumference. I bought some dowels from home depot and we belt sanded the point, the used a hand sander to smooth it out, and coated it with a lacquer.

Hoping the end look will be similar to the gorgeous original.