Looking back on what I’ve done in 2011, I was surprised to find it was a lot more than I originally thought. I have a hard time felting when it’s warm, I can’t bear to get too hot and the wool always seems extra staticy, so I only really felt for half the year. At the beginning of the year I finished making a series of lampshade covers from felt and fabric. I really enjoy making felt for book-covers and coasters and made quite a few of these. A lot of the felting I did this year was just samples. I treated myself to a whole load of ‘other’ felting fibres from World of Wool, things like plastic fibre, Milk protein fibre, Ingeo, Flax, and different nylon fibres. I also gave myself a refresher course in nuno felting and discovered that pink isn’t that bad, really. I ended up making quite a few things from felt that I had in my ‘spare felt’ box, like book-covers, purses, coasters, glasses cases and bookmarks, which was fun.

I wrote a few more tutorials this year: How to make a zipper purse from felt; Using the textured felt method to make a bag; How to degum silk; Direct Dyeing and How to make a website banner using Photoshop. While I was looking for a button for one of my textured felt bags, I came across some old Fimo buttons I’d made a few years ago and realised that having a good stash of original buttons would be great. It seems a waste to put the oven on for just a few buttons, so I ended up making a lot more than I’d planned to 🙂

Starting the Felting and Fiber Studio with Karen, Ruth and Ann was probably the last thing I expected to do this year. What started as a comment from Ruth about us all keeping in touch, quickly evolved into a website with lots of photos and information. We all worked really hard in a very short space of time adding the content to the site, which wasn’t easy as we soon realised there were limitations to how we can present photos, and a major feature of the site was changed on us as we’d almost finished, and we’d used that feature a lot. It’s been great to be part of a community though, especially since we got the forum up too and have been joined by so many great friendly and generous fibre enthusiasts 🙂

I think the thing I was most proud of this year was the felt scarf I made for my girlfriend. It was made from 18.5 micron merino with Milk protein fibre. It was the first full length, non nuno scarf I’d made and though it’s always a pleasure to make something for her because she genuinely loves what I make; I really wanted to make something special because she’s so supportive and makes it all worthwhile.