As many hours as it took me to get my test salvage coaster felted, it was with some trepidation that I put the finishing touches on the five coasters needed to complete the set, but sometime shortly after I got an automated call from my son’s school with information about a “state-wide technology failure” that resulted in some students not being able to complete an exam and just before I sat down to a late lunch with my son (whose exam was not derailed by the technology failure), I finished the last two coaster components.

Here they are with their companions:

and here are all five of the coasters in need of felting:

As long as it took me to get the first one done, I was ready for the felting to take forever, but I made three changes to my process that worked to shorten the amount of time needed to felt.

First, after a vinegar and water soak, I squeezed out most of the water, and put the individual coasters in the freezer for a couple of hours.

Second, I used hot water for the initial “shock” to the fibers. My hope was that by decreasing the temperature of the coasters and increasing the temperature of the water the fibers would get a bit more of a shock upon their initial entry to the water.

The third change I made was to be more judicious in my use of dish soap. My weekend experiment had been a bit heavy on the bubbles, and that seemed to have interfered with the felting process.

The changes (or a healthy dose of dumb luck) seemed to do the trick, and in very short order, I had five new dining room table leg coasters to add to the first one I had made:

Tomorrow, when the five freshly felted coasters have dried, I will put them in place, and move on to the next home improvement/better living through crochet project that awaits me, and finish work on some baskets to help me better organize these cubbies: