New Felting Supplies
After finally finishing my inventory the other week, I made a list of all the colours and breeds of wool I was low on and ordered some new supplies from World of Wool. As usual, I added a few things to my order which weren’t on the list, but the more you order each time, the more you save on postage, right? 🙂 I ordered a few natural white wool tops which I haven’t tried before, left to right: Whiteface Woodland, Dorset Horn and German Eider.
I’ve had a dark Brown Corriedale and a few different types of Jacob before, so I added some (Top to Bottom) Grey Corriedale, Grey Jacob and because I couldn’t resist, brown baby Alpaca Tops.
I also bought a few things I thought a lot of people might be interested in. I’ve seen Broken Merino Tops listed before, and thought they were probably what they sounded like, and they are. They look like what I’d imagine is left at the bottom of the bags or boxes when the nice part of the top has been sold: short pieces a few inches long, a bit crumpled and a bit messed up and separated. But not felted or matted at all. I ran some through my drum carder then used it in some blends for felted soap.
There were a couple of wool noils listed, which I’ve never seen before. There was Bluefaced Leicester Noil, and Black Finnish Noil. They both looked like they are probably what is left over after the wool has been carded into tops. Because they are both quite fine soft wools, even these noils feel soft, although there is a bit of vegetable matter in there too. This is the Bluefaced Leicester one:
And this is the Black Finnish noil:
I thought they’d be good for some extra texture and perfect for using in natural wool texture felt, so the better quality/more expensive wool isn’t wasted. I think these were both around £1 for 100g. And since I was going a bit mad with the order, I thought I’d get some Merino Burrs. They looked softer than nepps which I never have much luck with, and they do feel a lot softer, and flatter and not as tight/hard as nepps.
I’ve added these to the Wool and Animal Fibres Gallery, along with a few other new photos.
18 thoughts on “New Felting Supplies”
ooooh – something else for me to want now. I didn’t know about broken tops etc … they look useful! And those burrs are defo worth a try.
I was really happy with the broken tops, it’s really easy to get a nice pile of fibres just pulling them apart by hand, once through the carder produced a really nice batt 🙂
What a lovely package of fibres. You’re going get lots of wonderful textures with these. WOW is like an Aladdin’s cave, I try not to look at their website too often as I just want too many things. It’s always worth getting a couple more items to make up the weight for postage. More is less!! 🙂
Have fun.
Thanks, I’m looking forward to lots of texturey felt 🙂
I have the same philosophy when ordering supplies, if I need more than 20 items and go into the next postage category, it seems like a waste not to get extras, especially when they are only £1 to £1.50 for 100g. Also, if you spend over £50, you get the 5% discount which takes off that extra for postage!
Ooh, yummy! It looks like you’ve got some dyeing to do there, too. Do you have any plans for all of this? I just bought some cheviot on sale and have no clue what to use it for. Bent it will be fun to play with!
I don’t have any plans other than to try it all out really 🙂
I have some cheviot too, that is nice, I bought the Whiteface Woodland and Dorset Horn to compare to Cheviot as I think they are similar. I actually haven’t thought of dyeing any of the natural wools, I did dye some Devon top once, it might be nice to have some coarser coloured wool tops to use too.
Looks like a great variety to try out. Are the noils all short? I wonder if it is the waist from combing. Combing is supposed to take out all the short fibers and lumps. There doesn’t look like much to choose between the Whiteface Woodland, Dorset Horn. It will be interesting to see if they felt the same.
Yeah, the noils are short, there are a few long bits in there too, but I thought a similar thing. I think the two whiter wools are similar coarseness but I think the Whiteface has a little more ‘wave’ to it.
Ooh, it all looks so nice and I’m curious to see what you’ll do with it! I’m hopefully getting some fleeces this month and I can’t wait to try them… It’s nice to know I’m not the only fibre-mad person around 😀
Ooh, I hope you’ll show us the fleeces 🙂 I’ve never had a whole fleece just a few hundred grams of raw wool or locks.
Will do! I can even give you their contact if you’d like 🙂
Yeah, sure 🙂
PM me on the forum. Thanks.
Looks like a nice assortment Zed. I look forward to hearing about how it all felts and see what textures happen. I like the idea of the merino burrs as I don’t have much luck with nepps either.
I’m hoping the burrs work better, they look and feel like they should 🙂
This is very useful information, thanks, zed. Hope we are going to see soon what you’ve done with this new fibre.
You’re welcome, Nada 🙂 I hope I get time to try it soon 🙂
What a fun lot of fibre you bought! I looked at your Flickr photo and love the natural textured wall hanging. Will you plan similar projects with this new lot?
Thanks 🙂
Yeah, I thought it would be useful for that, cheaper than wool tops or washed wools. I might do a few samples first see how it felts.