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Friday 29 April 2011

Some Work and Felting Fail

I haven't been able to resist the crochet. It's hard to believe that it's just over a week since I started learning and despising it. How fickle I am that I now love it. The yarn I got in Scotland has been screaming at me to play with it and it required something a little larger than the flowers I learned to make last week. I found some different ones and mucked about to see what I could do with the patterns. This is the result. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them now though.









I've also made the cover for another tiny book. It's tricky to photograph with the means at my disposal, but it's 4cm x 4cm, covered with paper that I've bonded onto interfacing, then both machine stitched and hand embroidered, and sporting a mother of pearl button and linen thread closure. I have some really splendid paper for the pages with a gentle grain and fine watermark. The whole thing will shortly be sewn together and suspended on white satin ribbon.

I do love miniature things, which was sure to be applied to some of my work eventually. I go crazy for tiny knitted things and those polymer clay sweeties, cakes, etc. I'm also lusting after some handmade ceramic buttons from Little Brick House on Folksy, especially this one which I think I'll be needing this week.

Today I've mucked about with trying to felt some pure lambswool sweaters, which I've been wanting to do for ages. I have to say it's been a complete and utter fail. I've read up on it over the months, taking in the tips about washing, rubbing, tumble drying and all that carry on, but the sweaters remain sweatery. One of them has become so nice from being boiled that it's probably better off being worn. This wool must have come from some supersheep with magical powers. I obviously need to get some yarn and knit the blinking things myself before felting, but I was wanting to avoid this and be all recycle queen. Kh. It's not like I'm a stranger to felt, I've done wet felting, needle felting and used pre-formed craft felt a million times. Is this my payment for refusing to join in the stupid royal wedding palava? I've probably waxed vitriolic on the subject just once too often for my own good.

There's a ciabatta with spicy chilli chicken here with my name on it now, so I'm off to feast.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention! Really like the look of that little book you are making, look forward to seeing it finished.
    xx

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  2. If it's pure wool and not machine washable wool, then a hot machine wash should felt it. It may take a couple of washes to get it felted enough and a hot tumble dryer may help too. It took me about 6 washes to felt a cashmere sweater and even then it was too small to wear but not felted enough for what I wanted it for!

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  3. I'm not prepared to toady to a bloody jumper for ever lol. It's had two boil washes and hot tumble dries, then I thought sod it and boiled it in a saucepan for an hour before tumbling it again. It's still just a few % smaller than it was, so it can go to hell. It says it's 100 pure lambswool and must be washed carefully etc, but that's clearly all a ruse. Someone somewhere saw me coming and thought they'd have a laugh. Felting my arse! I thought it'd be a piece of cake. Can you tell it's got on my nerves? :-)

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