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.

Just a Little More Embroidery on Felt

Prefelt, embroidered

This was a circle of prefelt that I had sort of spatter-dyed with multiple colors.  At first I tried stitches that encircled various areas of color but didn't care for the effect.  I decided to superimpose a stitch pattern over the dye pattern (I love the concept of one pattern over another) and like the effects much more.  My stitches followed wavy paths; the waves are a little hard to detect but I like it anyway.  The stitch pattern would have shown up better if I'd used a backstitch instead of a running stitch.  I also wish I had fulled this piece of prefelt before stitching.  It's too spongey.  But I do love the texture!

Felt Julehjerte Valentine

Felt Julehjerte Valentine

It is a custom in Denmark and Northern Germany for families to weave paper hearts together to create lovely Christmas ornaments.  Although I always think felt when I see a paper project that appeals, I have to admit that I was inspired to try one when I saw Jennifer Ackerman- Haywood's tutorial for creating Julehjerte valentine baskets on her CraftSanity blog.  Jennifer's and my hearts are simple; she crafts with her children and perhaps I'm stuck in my felting days as a child.  The felt used if from my own sheep, of course.  But depending how the hearts are cut the weaving can be quite exquisite when paper is used.  Happy Valentine's Day to my blog friends!  

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!

Yarn, Felt, Nearly-Felt...

Today I pulled together my contribution to the Silent Auction that will be held at the Taste the View event.  This is a spectacular fundraiser held each year by CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture).  Well known in this area by the phrase, Local Hero, CISA helps farmers get their produce to customers and helps customers find local food.  I no longer produce and sell lamb but I still participate as a Local Hero because I produce local fiber.

Anyway... my contribution is a gift basket of some of one-ounce "muffins" of my sock yarn for the knitter that enjoys color work.  I stitched the basket together from some of my "Nearly Felt."

I'm sometimes asked why I call it "Nearly Felt".  My processor needlefelts large sheets of wool for me; these sheets are not as strong and solidly-fulled as the wonderful felt that some of the talented felt artists produce.  Rather, it's sort of a thick, cushion-y sheet of felted wool.  I would not use it for any object that requires strength; if used to make clothing it needs reinforcement.  But it's a pleasure to embroider with wool yarn;  I love the texture that is created by stitching into it.  To stay on the good side of the serious, talented felters whose definition of felt is not as inclusive as my own, I call it Nearly Felt.  But... I believe that it is still felt.  Cheesecloth and canvas are both woven cloth; they are very different and would not substitute for one another, but they're still both woven cloth.  Stepping down carefully..

In preparation for the fall fairs I'm working on a collection of fridge magnets. 

And finally, Bud has new work.  He still does "sheep work" with relish (often more relish than skill, but the job gets done).  But now twice each month he does "gentle work": he visits Hospice patients at a local home.

Just Wondering...

How is it that a pile of Stitchlets tossed together on the bottom step and waiting for a lift up to my studio looks so much better than any textile collage that I could create?

A Perfect Winter Day

Feeding the critters was delightful today. The sun was bright; it was cold but there was no breeze and it just felt good to be working in the fresh air.

The critters had finished their first bale of haylage, opened for them on Christmas Eve. Haylage is hay that is cut and then gathered up before it has had a chance to dry out. It is compressed and wrapped in plastic; the absense of air in the bale causes the grasses to ferment. (Off subject: in the distance are, left to right, the woodshed, Fort Apache the chicken house, our home, and just the peak of the building in which my husband built me a beautiful studio.)

I feed my sheep haylage rather than bales of conventional, dry hay because haylage keeps the fleeces cleaner, the sheep waste far less, and it's more economical.

A bale of haylage weighs in the vicinity of 1200 pounds. In the lower right hand corner of this image you can see a wrapped bale; the one that I just opened is the brownish-green one behind it.









Here's a close-up. When opened, a good bale of haylage has an odor that's been described as "pickles and beer." It's actually quite an appealing odor.






A few words about why I was silent since my post in May. 2008 did not get off to a good start here. There were numerous sad events and losses, and even an attempt to get away from it all for a few days ended in failure. One of the losses was my part time job; my company eliminated an entire sales division this past spring.

I knew that I had an indefinite period of unemployment and needed to find a positive way to spend this time as I sorted through various issues. I made the decision to see this time as a gift and to spend it quietly doing a lot of creative experimenting. Those months were a sort of passage for me between a not-so-good beginning and a much better ending for the year. Not every issue has been resolved- some won't be- but in general things are much better (and, by the way, I was able to find new employment and am in a better place career-wise). But beyond 2008, I made several discoveries and conclusions that will probably shape the path I follow.



Here's the first of many images over the next couple of weeks to get caught up with what I've been up to.

These are what I call stitch-lets; little 4 x 4 samplers of embroidery stitches. The wool is two-ply sock yarn from my own and other Massachusetts sheep; the felt is made up in large sheets from the less desireable (to spinners or knitters) fiber that I separate out when my sheep are shorn.

I love embroidering on felt and am doing these stitch-lets to learn new embroidery stitches and to apply embroidery concepts to felt. Very different from working on evenweave or needlepoint canvas! While I'm learning how to work on a scale that's larger than most embroidery work, it helps to keep the projects... and associated failures as well as triumphs- small. I love the texture, the variations in color, and especially the fact that this takes me back to when I was a little girl experimenting with felt. It was during the summer that I realized this connection to my past. I'll most-likely be posting lots more stitch-let images.