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Author: frabjousfabrica

I live in North Dorset, UK. I have been working in textiles on an off for most of my 75 years. I am mainly self taught and, with no basic grounding in art or design, picked it up as I went along, usually from books, but with occasional workshops. I have experience of all types of textile work but have now “rounded down” to felt making (both wet and needle), embroidery, crochet, and basic needlework; with the odd forays back to other techniques as needed for a particular project.
The Bull

The Bull

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We have three public houses in Sturminster Newton (at one time there were 11 in our small market town!) and The Bull Tavern is one of the oldest. The building consists mainly of a 3 roomed 17th Century cottage with an attic room, built of old timber infilled with wattle and daub. Some additions were made in the 18th Century. Records show that the cottage was definitely an alehouse by the late 1700s. Apparently there was a slaughter house at the rear and a Pound where straying animals were kept until collected – upon payment of a fee of 1 shilling (which must have been a fortune when you consider that a married man’s weekly wages at the Town’s Workhouse were all of 9 shillings and a single man’s only 6). Part of the C18th additions was a stable block (which eventually became a skittle alley and later part of the restaurant of the pub). It is rumoured that the horses stabled there were used to help get carriages and carts up the adjoining steep hill leading to Sturminster Common and the small community of Broad Oak.

The building, known to Thomas Hardy (one of our famous inhabitants) as The Old Bull Inn,  is shown on the earliest known map of the area dated 1783, as being part of the Pitt-Rivers Estate.  You can learn more about the Pitt-Rivers family here: https://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2012/04/sturminster-newton-and-the-pitt-rivers-family

About 18 months ago, after our then favourite landlords moved from the White Horse Inn in Hinton St Mary, the pub was closed for refurbishment. Hinton is a village about 1.25 miles away, where the Pitt-Rivers manor house is situated.  We used to walk there 3 times a week – our exercise with benefits – but since the benefits had disappeared we decided to patronise The Bull – for our exercise of course.  The only trouble with that was that it’s uphill on the way home whereas it was down hill from the White Horse.

During that time we had come to enjoy the chats with Marianne and Lance, the Bull’s managers.  Lance being the very good chef, and Marianne “Front of House”.  Early in January 2021, they announced that on Christmas Day they had got engaged.

One of my felt paintings – commissioned by a mutual friend –  had been given to the White Horse landlords as a wedding present a few years ago, and Graham, my husband, suggested that I do something similar as a wedding present for Lance and Marianne.

Felt picture of sepia tint image of old public house
My interpretation of an early image of The White Horse, Hinton St Mary

Although The Bull itself is a very interesting building, I wondered if I should do a picture of an actual bull for them. No date had been set for the wedding at that time, but I thought I should at least start collecting reference pictures, both of the pub itself, including some of their Pub sign and of some animals. I thought about breeds that might have been around in the 16th Century – White Park Cattle and black Gloucesters; and also looked at Herefords since that was the breed on the Pub sign.

image of Bull Tavern sign with hereford bull above image of the public house
The Bull Tavern and it’s sign
image of black bull with winners rosettes and image of large white bull
Gloucester and Park White Bulls
image of hereford bull head, image of bull grazing, image of bull in field
3 Hereford Bulls. I eventually picked the one at top left.

In the end I decided on a Hereford bull. After a lot of thought and manipulation of pictures, and also starting on a background field for the bull to stand in, I still could not come up with a layout that I was happy with. One idea was to surround the image of the bull with cameo pictures of nearby local landmarks – the water mill and the mediaeval bridge – with perhaps an image of the pub itself as well.

Then, just after Christmas 2022, Marianne said that they had set the date for the wedding – 10th June 2023.  Now I had to get my ideas together and get on with it.  The picture would need to be simplified if I was going to get it done and framed in time.

It was about then that my picture of the horse on the hillside in Devon was finished and it occurred to me that I could use a similar method of producing a figure with more depth.

image of felted horse on background of trees and stream
Detail from my Glorious Devon picture showing the horse added to the finished landscape.

  I finally decided upon a cameo type picture of the bull’s head and shoulders and I would use the background which I had made back at the beginning of this saga.  I would paint (with wool) the shoulders and neck and outline of the head on to a piece of flat wet felted core fibres.  With a separate face and ears, and a further separate set of horns and the nose on another piece.  I would cut all of the pieces from the backing when these were substantially finished.  I would fix the torso and neck onto the original background and layer on the face and ears, horns and nose, then I would do the final titivating and framing.  I made a start and here are the initial progress pictures:

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As I said earlier, it was intended that this picture would be a wedding present for Lance and Marianne, but at the beginning of April this year, they told us that, because of various unforeseen difficulties arising out of successive pandemic lockdowns (which included them catching Covid between lockdowns so having to shut the pub again)  they had decided to give up the tenancy of the pub.  They had obtained a job, with accommodation, managing a Touring Caravan Park in Cornwall.  Marianne was leaving almost immediately and Lance would stay on for a couple of weeks, with his last trading day on the 19th April.  So the picture was going to have to be a leaving present.

That caused a bit of a panic at home as you can imagine, so I had to get my head down and finish it NOW!  These were the final steps;

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I managed to finish the picture and, with Graham’s help, I mounted it in a deep box frame in time to hand it over to Lance on the 19th, when we went in for a final lunchtime meal.

So here’s the completed and framed picture – my entry for the 2023 Third Quarter Challenge – Something Special About Our Town.

image of felted bull head and torso on a field and sky landscape in wooden box frame
Finished and framed.
Closed cane picnic basket in garden with stone image of cat behind plus plants
Craft Basket Makeovers – part 1

Craft Basket Makeovers – part 1

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A good few years ago now, after I had acquired and learned how to use my spinning wheel, I was casting around for some means of storing the associated equipment in a reasonably respectable way.  The wheel and associated bits lived with us in our living room and needed to be tidy.

Quite by chance I came across a shop selling off cheaply a large deep cane laundry (I think) basket.  It was only going cheap because one of the handles was broken and it had no lid.  The much reduced price compensated for something which was no problem as far as I was concerned.

I used to work in Maidstone (Kent) and nearby there was a lovely shop called C&H Fabrics (sadly no more) which sold both dressmaking and curtain fabrics and haberdashery.  I could never bypass their remnant section – they almost always had something good and large enough to be really useful.  I managed to purchase several large pieces of curtain fabric of a design which was really “with it” at the time (most rarely  for me, I am usually following several years behind fashion fads).  This was during the time when Macramé made it’s first appearance and I was very “into” this.  So I removed the remaining cane handle and instead added two twisted cord macramé handles.

laundry basket without lid, with macramé handles, filled with spinning equipment

 

Then I set to and lined the whole of the basket using the curtain material, making sure that there were pockets around the sides of sufficient size to take threading hook, spare bobbins; flyer; carders; ball winder and my Neatsfoot oil – my wheel had a leather connection between the treadle and the footman – the bits that actually drive the wheel, and the neatsfoot oil is a good natural conditioner for leather and ok for oiling the metal parts.  The rest of the associated bits – fleece, box of carded rolags, tea towel used as a lap cover, cord for tying skeins and niddy noddy would just sit in the middle.

Now I needed a lid for the basket to keep the dust out (our bungalow was very dusty because part of it was still a building site).  So I cut two circles of the fabric and a circle of wadding.  I attached the wadding to the wrong side of one of the circles, by machine quilting around the pattern/motifs printed on the fabric. On the other circle, which would be the underside of the lid, I added a zipped pocket.  I then finished the lid by stitching the circles right sides together with another length of macraméd cord attached to one side.  Then, after turning the circles the right side out, and hand stitching the turning gap, I attached the other end of the cord to the basket. The lid sat on top of the basket with everything safely inside; well except for the niddy noddy which was too tall and had to stick out of the side, so it made do with a length of cord to attach it to the basket.  My brother in law had made the niddy noddy for me, having already made one for my sister.  It is purposely on the large side because each circle of a skein wound on it would be 1 yard long.  This made it easy to calculate the skein’s length.

Lined spinning basket with lid folded open to shop equipment in pockets
Finished basket open

Finished basket with closed lid to show quilting, with niddy noddy poking out of top.
Finished basket, closed.

The fitted out basket sat comfortably by my chair and spinning wheel while I was working at home, but was a bit big to take with me when I went to my spinning group each week. Luckily my sister, having visited the Willows and Wetland Centre on the Somerset Levels, gave me a large basket which she had bought there.  The Levels is a large flat low lying area where Withy Willows have been commercially grown for basket making for at least the last 200 years.  In fact willow baskets and other items have been made there since pre-Roman times.  If you are interested there is more information on the area here: Somerset Levels (As an aside, Glastonbury Abbey, also referred to in the link, used to own much of Sturminster Newton where I now live, despite Shaftesbury Abbey being much nearer to us and owning most of the rest of the surrounding land.)

But I digress.  The basket which my sister gave me was intended as a picnic basket.  It was short and wide and it’s carrying handles positioned so that it was carried flat.

picnic basket on lawn with handles up
See how the handles work to carry the basket flat?

It was just what I needed to carry tops (roving?) and spinning equipment when I was away from home.  Of course it needed to be fitted out with pockets to keep everything tidy and safe.  I had sufficient fabric left of the remnants used for the large basket to make them match.  I lined the base of the basket adding pockets at one end for flyer and bobbin, lap cover and oil.  I didn’t want to spoil the look by using the plastic box for my rolags and by then I had learned basket making courtesy of the WI.  So I made a basket to fit, lined it and made a lid with more of the fabric.  The lid of this little basket was quilted in the same way as the lid of the large basket, and also attached with macramé cords made from fine crochet cotton, with a wooden toggle closure.

small handmade cane basket with fabric lid attached by macramé cord with macramé and wooden bead closure
Rolag basket in the sun

By this time I was also “into” Tunisian Crochet. I had been making ordinary crochet items for as long as I could remember but fell for this new (to me) technique. So in addition to storage for threading hook, personal bits, glasses etc., I needed storage for at least one Tunisian crochet hook – this looks like a knitting needle, but instead of a point it has a hook. I also needed somewhere safe to put large sheets of paper patterns, as I tend to use diagram type patterns and they take up a lot of room. So I set-to to line the lid of the basket with just one layer of the fabric, but with pockets, short & fat and long & thin attached. I sewed this onto the inside of the lid but left one of the shorter ends unattached so that I could tuck paperwork etc., inside.

Open lined picnic basket showing lid lined and with pockets, and with rolag basket and other equipment in the basket.
All my equipment (almost) in the basket.

Incidentally, the sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that odd bit of hooked wire tucked away in the longer tube/pocket and be wondering what it is.  It’s a do-it-yourself lazy kate – a device for assisting with plying yarns from one, two or more separate bobbins.  An old shoe box (or a basket) and this bit of wire are all you need, poke the wire through one end of the box, slot the bobbin(s) on and poke the wire through the other end of the box.  It’s not the best way to do it, but if you put some tension on the yarn by passing it from the bobbin around the wire once before taking it to the wheel for plying, it works.

Oh and a quick boast – can you see the handle of the threading hook poking out of one of the lid pockets?  The handle was actually a light pull which I had made while having a go at wood turning some years earlier, and the hook is only an unbent paperclip – but it works ok too.

So that was my basket set up and ready for journeys.  Oh yes, the niddy noddy.  That was too big again, so it had to sit on top.

Closed picnic basket with niddy noddy on top attached by cords but with handles down.
Basket with niddy noddy (but the handles are down so I’ll have to remove the niddy noddy, put the handles up and replace it because the right handle won’t go over the end of the niddy noddy – then I can pick up the basket.)

Eventually the cane hinges of the lid, and the cane closure wore out so they were replaced with macramé cords.

Some time before I moved from Kent to Dorset in 1999, I wrote an article about these baskets and submitted it, with photographs, to the Journal for Weavers Spinners & Dyers as I thought it might be of interest to them.  Apparently not though; I eventually received a letter returning the photos (but not the article, so I’ve had to rewrite it!) and saying “… the Editorial Committee … felt that the article was rather too indirectly concerned with weaving, spinning and dyeing ….”   Oh well!

Theatre Textiles Act 2 Scene 1

Theatre Textiles Act 2 Scene 1

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After our move to The Exchange,  as mentioned in my first post  there followed several years’ worth of productions in which I was not called upon for costume assistance although I regularly helped my artist friend who designed and painted the Panto scenery, and assisted with makeup.  I once got the chance to make a giant beanstalk for our “Boy and Some Beans” Panto, after which I quite often was given the “head gardener” position whenever the scenery needed “vegetation” in addition to the painted sort.

In the mean time, and for several years running,  SNADS were asked to put on some form of Haunting for the Halloween weekend  at the local ruined mediaeval Wardour Castle.

Wardour Castle

Each year we wrote a short play, the various scenes of which took place in different spaces within and around the castle and it’s stone grotto, and 2 or 3 performances would take place each night over the nearest weekend to Halloween.  This was great fun, even if decidedly cold and/or damp on occasion, and we actually got paid for doing it!  It enabled me to expand my special effects makeup, which I had learned about at a theatrical summer school.  It was there that I learned of the amazing things you can do with gelatine and porridge oats!

I always liked to be a witch or a ’orrible ’ag as this gave me greater scope for doing ’orrible makeup and practicing my witch’s cackle!

Zombie face made up with gelatine and oatsPorridge anyone?

image of Halloween prop skull and skeleton hands beside zombie actorMe and a Friend (that’s me on the right)

I was tasked with making a prop for our 2010 Panto Arabian Nights.  The Sultan had a tame rat, which I was asked to produce as a hand puppet so that it could open and shut it’s mouth and wave it’s paws in a menacing way, and it was to have eyes that would light up red.  This of course I made in felt (wet and needle) and my husband provided the tiny red lights for the eyes from his model railway stock.  To make it more believable I needled a false hand onto the back of the rat and the section of arm extending from that hand covered the actor’s own arm as it disappeared inside his sleeve.  From the auditorium it was not really clear that the hand holding the rat was not the actor’s own, except that it was not the quite same colour as his real hand – which should have been made up but wasn’t.

Image of actor as Sultan with rat puppet and image of sultan, rat, captive dancing girl and Sultan’s chief wifeThe Sultan’s pet rat

For the same Panto I was asked to make up the Genie.  Here he is with a camel.  (I didn’t have anything to do with either costume though.)

image of pantomime camel head and genie in turban wiping camel spit out of his right eyeCamel and Genie

I was actually the front legs of this camel in our 2017 panto Ali Baba – great fun but tiring because my head was in his front hump and my arms were up his neck, holding up the head with one hand and using the other to poke out his tongue!  This is the least tiring two person panto animal we have, at least for the back legs actor, because s/he is able to stand up with his/her head inside the second hump (it’s a dromedary).

In June 2013 the Society obtained permission to perform Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment.  This is the one which is (loosely) based on the story of “Sweet Polly Oliver”, as she is called in the old folk song. She joined the British Army, dressed as a man, to try to find her brother, who she had looked after as a boy.  (The “Monstrous Regiment” of the title comes from a pamphlet written by John Knox in the 16th Century – a “gentleman” who I think would have felt quite at home in today’s Afghanistan in regard to his attitude to women.)  In addition to the Company’s enlisted “men” – all women pretending to be men –  the Company boasted a (female) vampire and a mountain troll (also female, but it is difficult to tell the gender in the case of trolls).

I was cast as the troll – Carborundum by name.  Mountain trolls are actually living rocks and I thought that I could do something with the costume for that.  I had, a few years earlier, needle felted some bas relief gargoyles/water spouts using mixed bats of Jacob fleece, which actually looked like stone – as long as you didn’t get close enough to see that it was hairy, I should have borrowed my husband’s razor!

Corner Gargoyle/Water Spout – The original of this water spout is attached to the corner of a church tower in Hinton St Mary, the village just up the road from where I live.

So I thought I could use felt, but what to attach it to so that it looked like rock and not clothing?  Well, a couple of years previously my Guild (Weavers Spinners & Dyers) held a special exhibition as part of the Dorset Arts and Crafts Association annual show, which was entitled Dorset Coast and Country – or something like that.  We had a whole room to ourselves and we filled it with exhibits depicting the county.  The Dorset coast is actually part of the Jurassic Coast – a World Heritage Site – and runs from Orcombe Point in Exmouth, Devon, extending east for 95 miles to Old Harry Rock, near Swanage in Dorset.  Therefore we had to include some exhibits around this.  I made a giant ammonite in needle felt and it was formed on a base of foam pipe insulation.

needle felted sculpture of ammonite leaning against some rocksAmmonite

So I knew that if I could find some grey foam I could make the troll’s costume out of that with felted embellishments.  Now I wonder where I got the foam from – silly question, as a needle felter I had been collecting foam in various sizes and thicknesses for ages.  Anyway, I put together a rocky costume, complete with some “moss” and embroidered lichen. I made up my face to be more flat planes than chubby me and this is the result.

actor made up and costumed to look made of stone – head & shoulders onlyCarborundum

Front row: Troll, female vampire trooper, Back row, officer and sergeant “baddies”

 

Terry Pratchett himself actually came to our Saturday night performance and obviously enjoyed it – he gave us a standing ovation.

Terry Pratchett talking to Troll with more cast behindCarborundum chatting to Terry Pratchett

I got to wear the costume at the Haunting of Wardour Castle that year and actually managed to frighten some of the punters when a chunk of the grotto turned round and glared at them!

Watch out for Act 2 Scene 2 sometime soon, when I might actually get as far as telling you about the Wicked Queen in the title image.

 

 

 

 

 

GLORIOUS DEVON – IT’S FINISHED! (Almost)

GLORIOUS DEVON – IT’S FINISHED! (Almost)

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At the end of the third post https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2022/08/20/glorious-devon-part-3/ regarding this picture, I left you with an image showing you where I had got to when I had to stop because of a very painful shoulder. This is the image:

pile of blended fibres in different colours, part of the original photograph, part of the felt painting, the felting cushion, the needle felted horse, a pair of scissors and a pair of glasses
At the End of Part 3

After some months during which the pain moved from my shoulder down my arm and into my wrist, I became pain free (relatively) and was able to finish the picture.  Here are the final steps which I took to achieve that.

You may recall from Part 3 that I had decided that the horse, which was the focus of the picture, would be created separately from the picture and added at the end; and that I had got to the stage where I was about to do that.  So now I needed to position the horse on the picture.  After trying a couple of slightly different spots, I finally decided where I wanted it to be on the picture.

the felt painting with horse in position held by a felting needle; mini carder full of green fibres on left.
Initial Placement of Horse

Here you will see the horse sort of held in place with a few swift jabs with a needle.  I have moved his tail so that it doesn’t get in the way while I am fixing him down.  I needled the surplus felt at the end of his feet and muzzle into the picture and then covered the white felt with more of the green mixture.  I also needled the lower parts of his legs.  Then I needed to sew the main part of the body to the picture – to avoid him falling out of it.  I used the linen thread that I had previously attached to the back of the body.

Image of the back of the picture with linen thread protruding from it.
Securing the Horse – view from the back

And this is a close up of the horse fixed in place .

Close up image of the horse attached to the picture.
Horse in Place

It was about now that I remembered that the original picture showed a pied wagtail in it near the horse, and that I had wanted to include one if I could.  So I looked up some reference pictures and saved three as they showed me the size that I would need to make the bird in the picture.

Composite picture of the images of pied wagtails with horse.
Reference Pics – Pied Wagtail

And here’s a close up of Willy Wagtail.

Iimage of corner of felt painting with wagtail near horse’s nose.
Pied Wagtail in Place

And that was it, done.  That is, I managed to stop myself “titivating” after I had tidied up some of the background.  I straightened the horse’s ears and smoothed his tail to allow for the appearance of it being stirred by a breeze, and mounted it. 

Completed felt painting mounted on dark green mount board.
Finished and Mounted Picture

Unfortunately, despite umpteen attempts under different lighting, the photograph shows the mount board as blue rather than green, although strangely it doesn’t seem to make much difference to the colours in the picture.

I took the mounted picture along to our local camera shop – which also does bespoke framing – to have the picture properly framed.  The horse, added on top of the bas relief picture meant that they would need to use a deep box frame, but they were to get some samples for me to choose from.  Unfortunately they didn’t, they went ahead with what they had, which resulted in the horse being pressed up against the glass (and I had made it clear that I did not want that to happen).  They had also sealed the frame so that I couldn’t get at the picture (which I had also insisted should not happen because I would need to make sure that the tail and ears were positioned correctly before it was finally sealed).  I found this very disappointing and I was not prepared to accept it, so the picture was removed from the frame and returned to me, along with my deposit.

The picture spent the Christmas and New year holidays sitting in our living room beside my other pictures, while we decided on the next step.  At the time of writing this, I have just returned from taking the picture to a “proper” picture framer. Having spent some time with them deciding on the change of mount board to a forest green colour and choosing a frame which would compliment the picture,  I am fully confident that the result will be just as I want it, and worth the higher cost.

I had hoped that by the time this post was to be published I would be able to add an image of the framed picture, but unfortunately it is not yet ready for me to pick up. I will however put up an image in the 2023 First Quarter challenge section – I have been working on this since late 2020/early 2021 so it must have been a UFO!

Now I can get on with the next picture.

 

Fleece Preparation System

Fleece Preparation System

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Many moons ago, when I was an avid spinner (before I had properly discovered felt) I had read various articles in magazines and journals about the preparation of raw fleece for spinning. I had obtained a very fine fleece (I can’t now remember what it was though) and wanted to be careful how it was readied for spinning so that I didn’t mange to felt the fibres in the process. So I set about making myself a system for the preparation of locks of fibre ready to spin. Unfortunately, the photographs I took of the system were actually of a later episode of washing a lousy Jacob fleece, so they may not look quite as you’d expect them to, but they will show you the process. Though I did manage to find a a few of the original locks so I can show you those. They are not quite as pristine as when they were first processed however so they aren’t as nice as they used to be. In addition, the light must have been wrong, because the background card on which they are displayed was a dark green, not the blue appearing in the photo!)

Locks

I obtained three large plastic crates and one smaller one which would fit inside any of these.  I made holes in the bottom and around the sides of the smaller crate with (so far as I can remember) a soldering iron, so that water would drain out of it easily.   Then I cut up an old net curtain into pieces the size of the base of the small crate.

Crates

I persuaded my husband to make me a couple of drying frames.  These were  wooden frames covered in chicken wire, and with removable legs long enough to keep the frame above the grass on our lawn.

On a fine day I assembled the “kit” on our patio ready to start.  This comprised the drying frames and a couple of old complete net curtains (which would stop the washed fibres falling through the netting); two buckets; a bottle of Fairy washing up liquid; rubber gloves; the three crates and bits of net curtain and my fleece (in the picture my pillowcase full of the Jacob fleece and the audio book I’d listen to while working).

The kit

I started with the “religious” (holey) crate, putting a piece of net in the bottom to stop fibres following the water out, then I pulled locks off the fleece.  I teased each of them out gently, (though in the pictures it’s just handfuls of Jacob locks) laid them out on the net, making sure that they did not cover each other.  When the bottom piece of net was covered, I laid another piece of net on top and carried on making layers of net and locks until the crate was full, finishing with a layer of net.

Layering the Locks

Next I filled one of the larger crates with rain water and dunked the religious crate inside it.  All the fibres wanted to float until I had managed to get them wet but I managed to get them to stay in the crate.

Religious Crate Full and in First Soak

I left them there for a couple of hours, then I gently lifted the inner crate out of the water and stood it on top of one of the larger crates so that the water would drain into it.  When most of the rainwater had drained away, I put the small crate with the wet locks into another of the larger crates, filled with clean water and Fairy Liquid – of a similar temperature to avoid shocking the locks. 

Soapy Wash Water

Once again I left it to soak and then lifted it out and drained it of soapy water as before (having emptied out the dirty rain water into watering cans to use on the garden.) Then put it into the other large crate, which had been filled with clean water.  I gently lifted the inner crate up and down a couple of times to rinse the locks, and then I took it right out and left it on top of an empty crate to drain. 

Once a good deal of the water had drained out of the locks, they needed to be fully dried.  I covered one of the drying racks with a fresh net curtain and laid out the locks on top of this.  A second layer of net curtain was added and the second drying rack was laid on top and secured with G cramps.  If I remember rightly it was actually a fairly breezy day so I stood the frames up rather than laying them down on the lawn so that the air could penetrate more easily. 

Washed Locks Being Laid Out to Dry
9 All Laid Out and Drying

The final result was lots of small fine locks all of which retained their lovely crimp.  They looked so scrumptious that I couldn’t bear the thought of spinning them up and loosing that, so I laid them out in lines across a piece of fabric and stitched them down at the cut end so that they showed all their glory.  I used this to make a padded waistcoat, they were the top of the sandwich of some cotton curtain lining (washed to remove the dressing) and some white wool fibres (I’m not sure what really, but possibly merino) nuno felted to some cotton scrim (thereby hangs another tale!)

Unfortunately it looked awful when I tried it on so it never got worn.  In the end I put the lot in the washing machine to felt and it will finally be worn as a bustle in this year’s panto – yet another tale! (tail?)

Why did I call the Jacob fleece lousy?  Have a look at this picture of the washed fleece – or at least some of it.  It must have been a really course fleece, possibly a ram’s. Whoever off loaded it on me really saw me coming!

10 Washed and Dried Jacob

I came home early from a very ­unenjoyable Guild  meeting in a filthy mood and decided I would make a large piece of Jacob felt so I could take my temper out on the fulling. Ha!  It. Would. Not. Felt – no matter how much “welly” I gave it. A lot of stamping on it and cursing later, it had just begun to felt but I could not get it any further (it’s a wonder it didn’t turn blue!)   I was exhausted and in no better mood when I gave it up.  The resulting heap of joined up fibres ended up in the cat’s bed – she loved it – and bits of it have been stolen back and used as the core of various needle felted things.  I’ve just about used it all up now – getting on for 10 years later.

Here’s a final picture of the Jacob fleece drying after it’s tour through the washing system, and you can see that my trusty assistant at least thought it was worth it.

11 Drying Fleece with Assistant
A Crown for Maris

A Crown for Maris

Comments 16 comments

I had hoped to show you my finished Glorious Devon picture this post, but I’m afraid I’m not quite there yet so – (in the well known phrase from the kids’ TV show, Blue Peter) Here’s one I made earlier!

Just before our pantomime, The Little Mermaid, went into the first dress rehearsal, the wardrobe mistress asked me if I would have time to make a finalé crown for Maris.  Maris was the sister of Neptune and Aunt of Serina, the little mermaid.  It is our invariable custom choose specific colours for all the finalé costumes and this year they were to be predominantly royal blue with silver touches and for Maris’ crown I was asked to think of the effect that water makes when something is dropped into it from a height.

I had a look at Google Images for inspiration and collected together my materials ready to make a start.  These consisted of a stainless steel headband, an empty plastic milk bottle, an empty Johnson’s Baby Shampoo bottle (the colourless ones they used before they changed the colour of the shampoo and thence the bottles) some royal blue organza, pale blue organza with silver/pearl embellishments, some silver lacy type fabric and some white/iridescent beads on wires that I had salvaged from old Christmas decorations (on the assumption that I’d find a use for them some day).  You can see these in the pictures below (with substitute shampoo bottle as I’d cut up the original one before I remembered to take the photo).  In the end I did not use the white braid that you can also see.

Materials
Salvaged Christmas Decorations

My idea was to make a double splash – a tall centre splash and a shorter outer splash. (I am pretty sure that I was not going to fall foul of any copyright since I don’t think there’s any such thing as a double splash.)

I cut the outer splash from the plastic milk bottle, stapling the pieces together; and the taller one from the empty shampoo bottle.  As the shampoo bottle was not cylindrical, but flattened, I heated the cut out piece with my hair dryer and squeezed it until it became more cylindrical.  Then I glued some of the royal blue organza onto it.  I found this took quite some time to dry and fix itself so, as time was short, I painted both sides of the shorter piece with royal blue acrylic paint.

Outer Splash Unpainted
Inner Splash with Organza
Both Splashes Tried Out For Size

To represent sprayed water drops, I added some of the salvaged Christmas decorations to the outer splash, having first extended them by twisting two wires together. I used some silver glitter glue on fine wires to make similar “water drops” for the inner splash and added those. I also glued some of the embellished organza onto the outside of the tall splash. Then I fixed it inside the outer splash and stapled them together at the base. After cutting two slits in the lower edges of the crown through which the headband would fit, I covered the base inside and out with some of the silver lace type fabric to cover the staples and soften the edges a bit. I cut out some of the “wave” shapes from this fabric and glued them onto the outer splash.

Finally, I slid the crown onto the headband and it was finished.

Finished Crown

Unfortunately, when I photographed the finished crown against a dark blue background, the silver came out gold in the picture – no doubt a trick of the light.  The second picture was taken against a white background and some of the silver drops appeared black.

The wardrobe mistress was pleased with the crown, as was I, but I think it would have been better to have been much larger.  It was a bit too dainty to be seen from the back of the auditorium.

Maris – 1st Dress Rehearsal – No Makeup

GLORIOUS DEVON Part 3

GLORIOUS DEVON Part 3

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Back in June last year, at the end of my 2nd post on this felt painting, having remixed the fibres for my palette and removed the fibres I had already needled into the far background of the picture, I redid that bit of work and left you with this picture of where I had got to then:

Starting work

I am pleased to say that I have made considerable progress since then and here I’ll take you along for the ride!

On my next visit to the Hideaway Workshop – my friend’s place where I tend to do most of my work on my pictures – I set to to blend fibres for the palette for the main part of the picture.

Blending Fibres for Palette

I worked on the picture for about 4 – 5 hours once a month, until I was able to take this photo of the results on 26th February 2022.

This was still work in progress and I carried on and in May I was able to take further pictures of details – Red Devon cattle in one of the far off fields; sheep moving on the hill in the middle distance; the beginnings of trees and shrubs in the near distance; and the river in the foot of the valley with woods behind.

Red Devon cattle in one of the far off fields
sheep moving on the hill in the middle distance
the beginnings of trees and shrubs in the near distance
the river in the foot of the valley with woods behind

By then I had done pretty much all I was going to do for the landscape until the final details just at the end, and I needed to get on with the horse.

Now, I was toying with a new idea about how to do this. For some time I have been considering experimenting with the type of scenery often seen in simple stage sets like our typical panto village scene with shops and other buildings. Almost all of which were flat with one side showing a village shop and the other some other building for a different scene. These would be set about the stage facing square on to the audience so that they could see only the side applicable to the current scene, with further buildings painted on the backdrop. Cast members would appear from behind these and various other scenery flats like rocks, or bushes. I don’t have any suitable photos that would illustrate this, but I do have a couple of photos of children’s toy paper theatres which also demonstrate what I mean.

Toy Paper Theatres

I thought I might be able to do something along these lines for the horse in my picture.  By affixing a fairly stiff piece of felt in the shape of the horse to the picture but leaving it’s head and the top of the body unattached and slightly proud.  I was hoping that this would give even more depth to the whole.

Knowing that if I was to needle felt a “flat-ish” horse to the required size, I would actually have to start off with a slightly bigger image – as the more it was needled, the more it would shrink and become out of scale.  So using my copier I enlarged the image of the horse by 10% and then made a tracing of the image.  As I did with the actual landscape picture, I then stitched the outlines of the horse through the tracing onto a piece of thick white felt.  This was a piece of the felt that I used for the background of the landscape, but folded into three.  I needled it and then wet felted it so that it was a solid piece of felt which would if necessary stand up on its own.

starting to stitch over the tracing
ready to colour in

I blended some fibres to make the palette I would use, having decided that the picture I had taken would be a guide to shape only and I’d have a slightly different coloured horse in my picture.

Horse palette

I had by this time removed all the guide stitches from the landscape picture, except the lower part of the Golden Mean lines to guide me where to place the horse when completed.

Here is the horse, substantially finished, about to be cut out of his background.

And here he is having been cut out. 

I have left the top part of the body with the original depth of the backing felt and have shaved down the backs of the legs, the belly and nose so that they will be more part of the picture as opposed to appearing to stand proud of it.  I have also added coloured fibres to the sides and the rear edges for the whole horse so that no white background will be visible when the horse is attached to the landscape.  The final shape of the legs and neck will be refined at that stage, and more grass added around the muzzle and hooves.  I have left the tail and the forelock un-needled to emulate a slight breeze blowing some hairs around. I have also attached some linen threads to the back which I will use to secure the body to the picture. If I don’t do this it is possible that the horse might fall off the picture if he’s only attached by his hooves and his muzzle.

back view

And this is where I have come to a (“shuddering”) halt.

I was hoping that this would be the last post in this series; that I would have finished my picture of the horse on the Devon hillside. However the recent very hot (to us) weather we have been experiencing here in the UK has meant that I’ve had to stop work. So I was getting very behind. In addition, I seem to have acquired an RSI (repetitive strain injury) to the shoulder of my dominant right arm – to be exact “rotator cuff related shoulder pain”. Although I don’t think it was as a result solely of needle felting, I suspect that the action of frequently stabbing fibres for several hours at a time may have contributed to it. It certainly hasn’t helped it. Whatever, it has resulted in my having to put aside my needle felting for the moment. I will post again as soon as I can get back to work and finish this, which has fast become a labour of love. In the meantime this where I have got to.

Back into the Project bag
Second Quarter Challenge 2022 – I can’t do that

Second Quarter Challenge 2022 – I can’t do that

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As soon as I saw what Lyn was setting as our next Challenge I thought “but I can’t do that”.  I have always stumbled when trying to understand Design because, although I can see pattern in a lot of things, I fail entirely in translating what I see into my work.  I am very literal in my thinking, and when I see abstract pieces (usually “modern” embroidery pieces) based on images of say, a broken brick, or the reflection in a window, or a rusty piece of metal, or a “fractal”, I think to myself “yes, very clever, but why?” and “what would I do with it?” and “I can’t see that on my wall” (and just occasionally “I wouldn’t give that house room!”).   This is why I tend to make my pictures or 3D sculptures as realistic as I can.

I was going to just not bother with this Challenge, and then I remembered that some years ago I had attended a course on Design – I had forgotten all about it and it is relevant to this Challenge.

In August 2015 the Association of Guilds of Weavers Spinners & Dyers included in it’s week long residential Summer School syllabus a course by Alison Daykin – “Design for the Terrified” and I was lucky enough to be allocated a place – most courses were usually over-subscribed.  Here is the introductory list of available courses from the brochure for you to drool over!

The course was described as offering “help to ‘painting and drawing challenged’ weavers, spinners, dyers, or other textile practitioners, in understanding Design and using this in their chosen medium”.  The brochure went on to say: “This course will provide simple, but effective guidelines in design, without the student feeling overwhelmed by theory. The tutor will also leave plenty of room for participants to express themselves in their chosen medium.

“By the course end students will have at least one sketchbook and understand the basics of: colour studies; textural studies; shape; line/stripes.

“Students are encouraged to make samples appropriate to their own textile skills. They may choose to bring their loom or wheel with them, or to develop further sketchbooks if they prefer.”

Frankly this description of the course frightened the life out of me and I nearly didn’t apply, not least because I would be foregoing the chance to take the offered very interesting felt making course. (It’s headline description was “… an ‘adventure with fibres and fabrics’, combining colour, texture and layering to produce felted fabrics for decorative purposes or garments” and that was what I was most interested in at the time.) However after exchanging a few emails with Alison, and reading the three blogs which she sent out about the course I decided to bite the bullet.
The first blog post puts emphasis on your “Inspiration” and resulted in a further flurry of emails with Alison, since I had no idea what it meant or what my “Inspiration” should be in this context. She basically said that I should pick a subject which I found really interesting. I was undecided whether to plump for trees, which seemed a very big subject, or sea shells – almost as big but of which I had recently started a collection. In the end I went with sea shells.

Sea Shell collection with Sea Urchin “
skeletons”

The second and third blog posts and a “round robin” email from Alison encouraged us to bring along as many different types of art media as we might be able to lay our hands on, including different types and colours of paper and “mark making” equipment. In addition we were asked to only bring one image of our inspiration, but as many copies of it as possible. (As I hadn’t been able to choose just one shell my image consisted of most of my collection, which also included sea urchin “skeletons”.) We would also need to take a notice board (if we hadn’t already made a mood board – “Er …. what’s one of them?”) so that we could pin up various bits and pieces as we went through the course. We would also need the equipment and materials required to make samples in our chosen technique. As I didn’t know which shell would be my inspiration the “materials” consisted of most of my stashes of fibres, fabric & yarns!
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the saying “everything but the kitchen sink” – very apt, my poor car was groaning when I set off with all this stuff plus clothes etc., and I had yet to fit in the friend I was giving a lift to, plus all her stuff and her walking aid. (She was still a bit frail after an illness.)

The Summer School was based at Moreton Morrell Agricultural College in Warwickshire, where (after we got lost twice on the way) I met Alison and the rest of the class members. There were weavers, spinners, an embroiderer and a felt maker – me.
Alison showed us her own work, and took us through her process for designing woven fabrics for specific purposes, showing us her mood boards and pictures of finished fabrics “in situ”. Here is a much abbreviated view of how she followed one inspiration from an image of ancient ruins to cloth samples.

She then started us off on our own design journey. Alison suggested to me that I should pick my favourite shell from the picture of my collection and make an enlarged drawing of the shell, both in monochrome and in colour and using different media. I had a go at this, although my drawing skills are minimal. This was before she had found that we would be able to have access to the college’s print facilities, where we could get photographs printed, and colour and monochrome photocopies made on a copier, which was capable of enlarging. We all made great use of this facility – zeroing in on just part of our inspiration image and having multiple copies made on different colour papers as well as plain white – which enabled us to speed up our progress through the stages of the design processes that Alison had mapped out for us.

One of the “tricks” which Alison showed us was to take two images, cut (or tear) them into strips (leaving one side of the paper still intact, and then to weave the two images.  This did produce some interesting results.

We also cut strips across an image and used this to reference yarn (in my case fibre) wraps. Using this method enabled us to achieve a colour swatch giving combinations, quantities and placement of harmonious colours.

Showing the progress from picture strip to felted swatch

Once we had all played around with these ideas for a day, we were encouraged to get on and start creating samples in our chosen techniques, keeping in mind how we might use the finished work. As I was interested in making felt for clothing and accessories, I had brought with me copies of designs from specific sewing patterns and tried to pick the patterns that would best suit. I had by this time branched out to using as inspiration two different Sea Urchin skeletons, one Cone shell (and when no-one was looking I did a bit of crochet based on the end of a Conch type shell).

  • Large Sea Urchin
  • Small Sea Urchin
  • Cone

As you can see, I’m still leaning towards the literal/representational side of designing.

Alison also encouraged us to take our cameras and go out around the college grounds and look for more inspirations for design. At this stage we had all got used to looking beyond the obvious and came up with some unusual images. This was the one I chose to do something with – don’t ask me why – it’s just a picture of the wood surround (and my toes) to a raised flower bed outside the portacabin which was our workshop, where we all congregated for coffee, snacks and chat.

Being full of enthusiasm for the project, I cut down the photograph to a corner and then cut out the image of part of the surround.

which I then had enlarged and with several copies started to develop the design

This is the design I finally ended up with.

There are five versions in this picture, the basic design on top with four colour changes of the small “pops” of colour.  And here is the jacket pattern and a tracing of the design.

The last day of the course was mainly taken up with visiting the rooms where the other courses had been taking place for a grand Show & Tell. To this end, we had packed up all our equipment and materials and set up our notice boards and work tables as displays of what we had been doing. Here are mine

And here are some of the displays of other class members’ work.  Not all of them I’m afraid, I had camera shake by then so I’ve only included the less blurred ones.

The whole Summer School experience was great, with evening entertainments, a fashion show, a display of entries for the Certificate of Achievement “exams”, a traders’ market (I spent too much money as usual) and a trip to Stratford Upon Avon for a tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Theatre with a chance to see some of their costumes “up close and personal”. 

We inhabited a bubble, with little contact with the outside world.  (There wasn’t even a signal for our mobile phones, short of climbing a hill and standing in the middle of the road.)  A wonderful experience and I’ve enjoyed revisiting it.

I am afraid that by the time I got home again I reverted to type and have not made any fabrics, felted or woven, from any of the designs. I just did what I usually end up doing after returning from a workshop – I put everything away and forgot about it! So I still don’t have a 2nd Quarter Challenge piece to show you; though as a result of writing this post and after seeing some of the pieces which FFS members have posted, I do feel better about the possibility of designing from random observations and images.

I am looking forward to seeing what the next quarter’s Challenge will be.

We Need a New Door Stop

We Need a New Door Stop

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Recently we have acquired a new bookcase for our living room.  It was actually made to fit in the space between the front wall and the door of the room.  However it has a sort of lip around the top, the corner of which was banged by the glass of the open door if we were not careful.

2 Views of the book case against the glass (with some of my menagerie in view on the book case)

Obviously we needed something to stop the door before it fully opened. After some thought I decided that it needed to be tall (so that we didn’t have to bend down too far to move it – the floor gets further away the older you get), but it needed to be thin too otherwise the door wouldn’t open far enough to let one of us safely into the room, especially with drinks in hand.

I wanted it to go with the colour of the carpet and I knew that I had somewhere in my stash a blue wool sweater that I had felted (on purpose) by putting it through the washing machine. I finally rooted it out and decided that I would use one of the sleeves, which had a pattern knitted into it.

The Other Sleeve – what’s left of it – the pattern looks a bit hazy but hang in there, you’ll see it later.

Initially I thought that I would make a tall thin pyramid shape to fit in the gap between the side of the book case and the door. I sewed up the cuff of the sleeve and, to make sure it didn’t keep falling over, I begged a piece of flat lead sheet from my husband which I fitted into the bottom of the stuffed sleeve, and then sewed up what had been the shoulder to make the base. 

Well it was ok, but I thought it needed a bit more interest and decided to turn the door stop into a cat.

Out came the felting needles and my scoured merino, which I use as core fibres. Then for the “top coat” I sorted through the blues in my stash – normally jealously guarded because I don’t have a lot now as I use them for sky in my pictures – and found some which almost matched the main blue of the sleeve. Obviously he wasn’t going to be a realistic cat so I tried to “cartoonise” his features, and rather than give him needle felted eyes as I might normally do I fished out some bright orange glass eyes from another stash which would go well with his dark blue face. I used some of the blue to make a wet felt sheet, out of which I cut his ears.

Having made his head, I attached it to the tall thin pyramid. It’s sewn as well as needled on, but even so I was concerned that if he was picked up by his head it might come off. I made a piece of blue cord and attached that as a loop behind his head so that he might be moved safely. And here we have him.

Smiley Door Cat

Not long after this, we acquired a new pinky-grey bathroom carpet and also new pink and grey towels to replace very tired old red ones. Until then we had been using the bathroom scales as a door stop – that door will slam very hard if the wind gets up when the window is open. So now I decided that we would need another door cat.

When we got the new carpet we did not change the basic colour scheme as we didn’t want the hassle of changing the suite (vintage Pampas) or the tiles. The colour scheme is essentially derived from the tiles, which are pink and grey with some crimson detailing. Originally we had a red-ish carpet and red and dark grey towels, but when I bought those towels I could not get a bath mat to match, so I made one by stitching two red hand towels back to back.

Bathroom Tile

As the new carpet shed fibres quite a lot to begin with I thought of making the new door cat out of that fibre, but after a little more thought I realised that that would not be a good idea. We would keep falling over a camouflaged cat in the gloom of a late night visit!

So I thought I might find another felted sleeve, but couldn’t come up with something the right colour. Then, because we still had touches of red in the room, I decided that I would deconstruct the old red bath mat and use one of the pieces for the cat’s body. I had already given away the rest of the old towels to my friend for her dogs.

I felt that a “loaf cat” pose would be best, less likely to tip over if the wind caught the door, but I’d need too much lead sheet to make it a suitable weight. So I visited the garden and found a triangular(ish) shaped piece of rock, washed it and wrapped it in a couple of layers of non-woven cotton towels, secured with masking (painter’s) tape. I made myself a paper pattern of the body and cut out two body sides and a gusset for the base and chest. I cut out the pattern pieces from the towel and stitched it all up (first inserting the wrapped rock and stuffing it with polyester stuffing.

I had seen a cartoon of a smiling cat, which had enormous ears, which looked really cheeky. I thought I’d have a go at making one like that. I started with the core fibre again and got the head substantially how I’d like it and then thought about fibres for the coating.

Head ready to be covered in “Top Coat” (for some reason enlarged umpteen sizes)

I did not have exactly the right red, so had to blend a couple of pieces of pre-dyed merino tops which seemed to work ok. I did the same to make a pinky-grey blend for the chest, face and inside of the ears. I had decided that I would make the cat’s chest a similar colour to the carpet which meant that I had to make a wet felted sheet of the pinky-grey batt to cover the original red towelling. I cut the felt into the shape of the chest gusset, leaving enough for a pair of large ears.

I needled some of the red onto the back of the ears, and this resulted in a darker pink on the inside where the needles had pushed fibres right through, which was actually a benefit I think. I needled the blended red on to the back of the cat’s head and neck, and the pinky-grey onto the face, attached the ears and gave him a darker pink nose. I “shadowed” the smile and blinking eyes and I also gave him some laughter lines.

Nearly finished head, along with my felting cushion and a trapped needle holder

Then I stitched the head onto the neck, and the chest piece over his front, catching in the head at the neck.  I covered the join with more needled fibres and, using another piece of towel, attached a handle to the back of his neck so that he could be moved without his head coming off.

Loving Blinks from the new Door Ward

My husband has already named him Yoda.  We each confessed the other day that we both chat to him (in fact I pick him up and cuddle him too – he just fits into one arm)

What about the poor tatty sheep at the beginning of this post? Well, many years ago now, when I was a fairly new needle felter, I decided that I’d like to make myself a door stop for my bedroom door. I had acquired from our Guild a Jacob fleece, which, as it turned out, was ideal for needle felting. It certainly wasn’t a lot of good for wet felting – it wouldn’t, whatever I did to it. I suppose I must have had an old ram’s coarse and kempy fleece palmed off on me, when I was too naïve to know what I was getting – no wonder it was cheap!

Anyway, I got a body shaped pebble out of the garden, and washed it, wrapped it in some of the un- wetfelted fleece and started in with a No.36 felting needle (I only had 36 triangle and 38 star needles in those days- oh and a No.19 which was so thick it wouldn’t really go through anything I had with any ease). I bust quite a few needles before the pebble was covered. I added a neck to one end and then decided that my sheep would need eyes and a pair of horns. At that time I did not know that Jacob sheep often have 4 horns and wear them as if they had put them on in a hurry in the morning whilst still half asleep!

I made the horns and eyeballs using pipe cleaners and white Fimo polymer clay, baked and painted with acrylic paints. At that stage in my career I had not thought of using PVA glue on needled fleece to make horns. I needled a head shape around the horns and eyes, and then attached it to the neck. It did not occur to me to strengthen the neck with the ends of the pipe cleaners, I had cut these short and just put the horns on either end, and did the same with the eyes.

Well it all worked and for years he sat by my door, getting moved when necessary with my foot.  Now he’s a sad old thing, but being sentimental I can’t bear to get rid of him, even though he’s lost a horn and is definitely the worse for wear.  Perhaps I’ll give him a “makeover” sometime.

Poor Old Jacob, grown old and infirm in service

 

 

Fleece Challenge

Fleece Challenge

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Back at the beginning of the Century, when I was a fairly new member of the Dorset Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers, and an enthusiastic entrant for challenges, the Association of Guilds of Weavers Spinners & Dyers (referred to by older members as “National”) via it’s quarterly magazine “The Journal” decided to run a Rare Breed Challenge.

National would provide a quantity of raw (unprocessed) fleece to any member of a Guild who entered with the intention that the member would process the fleece and send in a report for publication in the Journal. I thought that I should have a go.

The piece of fleece that arrived in October 2001 weighed 5¼  oz (145 gr.) before washing.  The staple was 4” long with a pronounced crimp, and it was quite oily. 

Staple

I placed the whole sample in my “patent fleece washer” (about which more sometime in the future) and left it to soak in plain rainwater for two days. The garden benefitted from the mucky water afterwards.
The fleece was drained but not dried, and then given two further long soaks in rainwater and Fairy liquid. A final overnight soak in rainwater and Woolite was followed by two rinses in rainwater (it must have been a wet autumn). The fleece was drained again and then spread out on a rack in the airing cupboard to finish drying.

Raw Fleece, as it arrived
Washed Fleece

I was surprised to find that almost all of the lanoline had been removed from the fleece, despite the fact that the rainwater had not been heated at any time. However, as this was the first time that I had washed fleece, I should possibly have expected this result. Because the fleece was so dry, I added a smidgin of Johnson’s Baby Oil as I carded it. At least to begin with – until I got fed up with the smell and added some lavender oil.

I decided to make a shawl or stole, because the fibres felt a little too scratchy for a scarf or anything which would be close to the skin. I did not think that there would be sufficient yarn to make a garment to be worn on top of other clothes. I felt that a fine yarn to make into a lacy article would be best – it would go further than a thicker yarn and, with care, be “light and airy”.

I wanted to spin much more finely than I have done in the past and had read somewhere that thin rolags would be better for fine spinning. So when carding, I separated each bat into two layers (one from one carder and one from the other) and formed the rolags round a knitting needle to make long thin rolags.

Carding the fleece.
“Pencil” Rolags

I had also heard that it would be easier to spin finely if I padded out my bobbins. (You can tell that I’m mainly self taught from watching others spin or reading books, as I don’t know the mechanics behind these theories – but I’m was learning.) I used foam pipe insulation around the spindle of my bobbins and this worked very well.

It appeared to be quite easy to spin finely, at least for the first two bobbins. After that I was using the rolags from the bottom of the pile. They had suffered from compression and were more difficult to spin without too many slubs appearing. I plied the first two bobbins and took off the resulting two-ply yarn onto my niddy noddy. This is a very handy size. It was made for me by my brother-in-law and each full round measures a yard. I was therefore easily able to calculate that the length of my first skein was 118 yards. I set the ply by dipping the skein in cold (tap) water and Fairy liquid.

When it had dried I found that, despite having been spun semi-worsted, the yarn was quite fluffy. I felt that this would result in a blurring of most pattern stitches and decided therefore to try Broomstick crochet. I made a sample (a very rare occurrence for me) and found that, if I combined Broomstick with Tunisian crochet, I could make quite an attractive triangular shawl.

In case you are not conversant with Tunisian Crochet, let me give you a brief lesson. The hook used for these stitches is crossed between a knitting needle and a standard crochet hook – i.e. a knitting needle with a hook at the opposite end to the knob. (It is also possible to get a double (hooked) ended Tunisian hook for more complicated work). Each row is worked in two halves – a forward and a return row. Tunisian Simple stitch forward row is in fact unfinished Double (Single in US) Crochet. The final loop of each stitch is left on the hook so that at the end of the row you have a hook full of stitches, as in knitting. The return row is made by chaining off the stitches so that you end up with just one loop on the hook and are ready to start the next row.

According to Muriel Kent (author of Exciting Crochet – a Course in Broomstick & Tunisian Crochet) Tunisian Crochet is known as Afghan Crochet in North America and has also been called Russian Stitch. She reports that it is a very old craft, older than both knitting and ordinary crochet, and that an example had been found in an Egyptian tomb.
Broomstick crochet (or Witchcraft Lace!) is thought to have originated in North America, the principle being to make loops of a regular size by placing them onto a Broomstick – or very thick knitting needle – and to remove them in regular groups with double (single) crochet.

As I had not yet spun up all the prepared fleece, I had no idea how much yarn I would have in total. Also as time was now getting on, I thought I had better start on the shawl straight away, rather than wait until I had completed the spinning and plying. The safest way to cope with not knowing how much yarn I would finish up with was to start at the point and to increase at either end of the rows as I went along. Then, if I started to run out of yarn, I could avoid more easily ending up with an odd shape.

In the end the stitches I used were not quite those in the sample.  I have used “Tunisian Broomstick” rather than Tunisian and Broomstick.  After forming the Broomstick loops on a 20 mm Broomstick pin, I took them off in groups of six using a 4½ mm Tunisian crochet hook.  Instead of finishing each double crochet in the usual way, I left the last loop on the hook, Tunisian fashion, and then chained them all off. The next row was Tunisian treble (double treble?) stitch, and the increase was carried out at each end of this row – doubling the 12 stitches above the first and last “fan” of Broomstick stitches. This was done by passing he hook through the stitch on the previous row for one stitch, and then between that stitch and the next on the previous row for the new stitch, six times, increasing the stitches on the hook by twelve in total. These three rows form the pattern and give a right angled triangle.

Starting the Shawl
Tunisian Broomstick

I did not get the shawl finished before I had to send in the report, so there was no photo of it, but I note that I did enter it in our Guild Special Exhibition in 2002 which formed part of the Dorset Arts & Crafts Exhibition that year.

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