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!  

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.

Fantastic Felt Fulling Flop

A Basket of Flop

Actually, it was a prefelt fulling flop.  But I just love alliteration. I was hoping to full one of my prefelts in preparation for a project I want to undertake as a participant in Jude Hill's Contemporary Woven Boro online class.  I ran it through a full cycle in the washer.  I knew this prefelt was a little iffy because its route to the machine needlefelter at my processor was a bit circuitous.  I won't go into details here because this experience will be described in a prefelt fulling tutorial that I plan to write and post soon.

Here it is all spread out in its glory

Actually, I like it.  It fascinates me and I think there are little areas that will find their way into some project(s) eventually.

I didn't get a shot of this fiber before fulling, but here' s an identical piece un-fulled.

Prefelt, Pre-flop

And, by the way, here's one of my regular prefelts which has been fulled in the washer and is ready for my class project.

Fulled Prefelt

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!

Prefelts Galore

Prefelts

Over the last few weeks I've been replenishing my supply of prefelts, concentrating on colors for a certain upcoming holiday!

The Pygoras have all been shorn; they were in full fleece and I was worried that waiting until spring for shearing would result in matted, unusable fleeces.  The shearing process wasn't pretty in the beginning because I do not have a stand with the proper fitting to immobilize a goat.  I finally found it easiest to just hold them in my lap while shearing.  There was initially some struggling, but once each goat realized I was relentless she relaxed and almost seemed to enjoy the process.  I enjoyed it too; it was somewhat contemplative and I enjoyed what there is of afternoon sun in early November.  Shearing took way too long and because I used scissors I left quite a bit of fiber, but that's ok since it's starting to get chilly here.