Felt Hearts

A goal for the New Year is to create more finished products with the wool from my flock.  With that in mind, I created my first FINISHED ornament from some of my pre-felt on New Years Eve.  It's the white heart, below.  I've done lots of play with the prefelts, doing little sample pieces with various embroidery stitches; some can be found on previous posts (if interested, use the pre-felt and embroidered felt labels).  I've displayed them at fairs and been asked if they're for sale.  This year I still want to play... but I'd like to play with a purpose!

Felt Hearts

Felt Heart

I think I'm off to a good start.  Yesterday we visited my dear friend Amy and her fiance David for what is becoming an annual New Years Day open house.  Here's what our gift bottle of Merlot  looked!  Wishing a Happy, Healthy and Productive New Year to all.

Weaving With Felt

Weaving with Felt

Just a quick look at a project I'm working on, weaving with felt strips and vintage rayon fabric gleaned from thrift shop finds.  This project will take time; I'll post more photos of little details here and there as I progress.

Socks from Sojourner Design Yarn

My local customer who enjoys knitting with Meadow Muffins yarn has been at it again!  This time she used a more subtle combination of hues.  Just in case you haven't seen them, here's the shot of her first pair of socks with this yarn.

I'm hoping to see more work from this gal!  Also, notice the backgrounds.  The first socks were finished early last summer and laid out on lovely green grass.  The new socks ... done in December and resting on pristine Northampton snow.

Speaking of snow, here's a view of my sheep pressing in around the winter haylage feeder this morning as the snow was falling.

I've refreshed the Home Page of my website with a couple of photos taken this morning.  In fact, you'll find a number of changes and additions (such as the Prefelt page) there.  Here's one of the photos I added to that page:

I've added a few listings for carded wool to my Zibbet Shop... now I just need to figure out how to make all those Meadow Muffin hues available online!

Sushi Checkers

I worked on this project for more than two years; however, all but the last two months or so was worked out in my mind and in my sketchbook.  The goal was to create a checkerboard  and checkers that would be attractive as a wall hanging but could be easily disassembled for a game of checkers.

The material used is roving, yarn and pre felts from my own flock, hand-dyed.  There is a piece of fabric interfacing between the weaving and the background to give the piece a more board-like feel.  The work includes weaving of the strips to create the checkerboard, embroidery, and needle felting.  They don't show up well in the photo, but bright poison-green beads are placed regularly to add contrast in texture, hue and value.

Many decisions were made as I worked, including the idea to hang the checkerboard from a corner and how the checkers would be incorporated into the hanging.  I tried several designs for the checkers and found that needle-felting was most effective.

This piece was entered in the Creative Arts exhibit (mixed media) at the Eastern States Exposition where it was awarded with an Honorable Mention.  Lots of fun to make but I was glad to be able to move on to other things when it was complete.  And a weight was lifted when I was able to get the concept out of my head and into material existence!

Franklin County Fiber Twist

Pre-Felts

Franklin County Fiber Twist is less than a week away and since I'll be quite busy toward the end of the week I've started getting products packed.  After weighing and labeling all my Pre-Felts, I just had to spread them all out for a group shot.

Pre-Felts

My Pre-Felts come from my processor with the edges un-felted; I choose not to remove this part as when I'm personally using them in projects I sometimes find it helpful to have a little carded fiber in the same color to use.

Pre-Felts