This project has been, well, much more involved than I thought it would be.  But I am delighted--it's almost done!  All the little pieces--the "Party Hats for Cats" that I created--went through the washer tonight and came out beautifully fuzzy.  The Berocco alpaca really does felt beautifully--the lady at Knit Purl said it did--and although part of me thinks maybe I should shave it, another part really loves the hairy soft look of the felted pieces.  

Once I rescued the pieces from the washer and dried them (I wrung them out and then used a towel), I used cups to shape them into, well, cup shapes.  Unfortunately four of our Ikea cups have gone missing, as sometimes happens in a house with a kid, so I did the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff cups on the Ikea ones, and the Slytherin ones on two of D's old sippy cups and two empty Mike's Hard Lemonade bottles.  Those are a little skinnier than the Ikea ones, but I think it'll all work out in the end.  The bigger Ravenclaw cups are on a couple of our big 16-ounce tumblers.

 

Okay, the rest of the pictures will be behind a cut to save your friends' page.

Here are the Party Hats for Cats, pre-felting, laid out in their pattern on my couch.



And here they are from another angle, with the swatch I made so I can size the base. It didn't shrink much, only 1/2 inch lengthwise and not at all in the width.



And here are closeups of the cups; you can see the fabulous furriness of the felting!!!



Tomorrow I'll get the base started.  It'll probably take me a couple of days to get it finished and felted, but I have hopes of getting it in this week and bringing my O.W.L. tablecloth to 25%.