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Author: zedster66

Learning to Crochet

Learning to Crochet

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I’ve had tradies in for weeks, so haven’t had a chance to felt. Having a rare bit of quiet time the other day, I thought ‘why not give crocheting another go?’ After about 8 videos, I remembered why! I did manage to make some things you could loosely describe as chains, though:

I thought felt and knitting were hard to photograph, until I tried to photograph crochet! All these photos have been redone at least 3 times. I thought I might have better ‘luck’ if I used some commercial yarn instead of my handspun superwash which spun about as well as it felted. I also looked for a better video, and finally found someone who spoke slowly enough for me to understand and had a really clear explanation:

So with some commercial Aran wool and a new video, I made a neater single chain:

The thing I’d had most trouble with on other videos was their explanation of how to do the next row, which stitch was the ‘second stitch’ etc. Luckily, Lesson 2 was SO clear, I did it first time:

My samples weren’t perfect, but much better than my first chains!

I thought I’d try it with the pencil roving I was using for knitting:

But, what now? I don’t know what the next part is called so couldn’t find a video for it. How do you do a 3rd row? Turn it over and do the same thing? It didn’t look the same, but I gave it a go:

Is that right, how it’s meant to look? If you have any tips for what I need to know next, I’d be grateful! So, wanting to keep practising my new ‘skill’, but not having a clue, I thought I’d freestyle it:

Yeah, that is some kind of small crochet bowl! I wondered if I might be better at bigger crocheting, like I am with chunky knitting. So yesterday, I made myself a chunky hook, here it is next to the size 4 one I was using:

It needs a bit more sanding and maybe a bit of beeswax or something, but I had a go and made a chunky sample:

I am now going to enjoy the first peace and quiet for weeks, by clearing a space to do some felting! Any crochet tips greatly appreciated!!

Cords and Knitting

Cords and Knitting

Comments 20 comments

I haven’t had chance to do much felting lately, apart from making a few ‘spare’ cords for future use.

I just used some colours I had out from when I’d made some felted soap:

I did start on a couple of knitting projects though. I just wanted something to do, so haven’t decided definitely what this first one might be, but a headband was one idea. It’s made with the pencil roving waste from World of Wool:

I also started some other knitting, this is with ‘proper’ pencil roving, I thought I might make it long enough to make a simple bag out of:

I have a nice green version of the wool too:

One thing which has stopped me doing many knitting projects is my first attempt at sewing up. I don’t know if you remember some pieces I made a while ago:

I made them with the intention of sewing them into arm warmers. I don’t think I ever showed them sewn up. I watched lots of videos and could not work it out, so in the end someone at a knitting group did one for me and I copied. Well, they look pretty horrible:

I’d planned to use the same pencil roving waste to sew up, but was told it’d be better to use something thinner. I was even talked out of using pencil roving, like the variegated one, and used Arran or something similar. I have a couple of other pieces I’d made for arm warmers, but they’ve stayed knitted rectangles because I don’t want to ruin them!

If anyone has any suggestions or can point me in the right direction for tutorials (think ‘explain like I’m 5’ kind of thing!!) I’d be very grateful 🙂

Colourful Nuno

Colourful Nuno

Comments 18 comments

A while ago, I made a few pieces of orange felt to get the right one for my friend who wanted me to make a purse. It took a while, but I did finish the purse. Here is the front:

And the back:

Inside:

I made a couple of nuno felt pieces recently with plans to make them into things. I left the tassels hanging over the edge because I thought it’d look good made into a bag:

I like these scarves, luckily other people don’t seem to anymore so I’ve found quite a few at charity shops:

Great texture:

I made a patchy textured piece:

I like the combination of textures:

I really like the way viscose fabric ripples in such a soft ‘swishy’ way 🙂

Do you have a favourite fabric to nuno felt with?

Nuno Samples For Scarves

Nuno Samples For Scarves

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We’re making scarves at the well-being centre. To practise, I took in some strips of scrim, some fine 18.5 mic Merino and some scarf samples made with the scrim and wool. These are the scarf samples:

The top one has a fine, narrow strip of wool all the way around; some random narrow strips and a few ‘blobs’ of blue:

The second one down has a simple grid pattern made from fine, narrow strips:

The middle piece has two fine layers (1 horizontal, 1 vertical) of wool tops:

The fourth one down had resist strips placed along the scrim, then two fine layers of wool, and embellished with some very shiny cellulose fibre I got in a bag of Botany lap waste-it’s different to any others I’ve got, but closest to viscose, so from what WoW sold at the time, I’m guessing it is Tencel:

The bottom piece has a fine, narrow strip of wool all around and through the centre, and has wool in the same position on the back of the piece. It’s the only one which does. I also fulled the middle more than the outside, so the edges waved:

The last orange one at the side has flowers in the middle made from the same 18.5 mic Merino, and leaves at each corner, it also has leaves on the back at each corner:

And for something a bit different, I made a demo scarf using dyed, irregular pieces of scrim as a base This is the scrim side:

And the wool side, also using 18.5 mic Merino, and embellished with viscose:

Our freak early Autumn warm weather was over as soon as it appeared, so it looks like we’ll be needing scarves soon!

2017 4th Quarter Challenge

2017 4th Quarter Challenge

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My first thought for this quarter’s challenge was to choose something very old, like very first cave paintings etc, but it isn’t really an art ‘period’ and it was hard to come up with something that wasn’t too wide or too narrow a topic. Then, like Marilyn, my instinct was to choose something to do with abstract art, I was thinking abstract non-figurative, bold patches and sweeps of colour, but after a bit of searching and researching decided on: Suprematism

Kazimir Malevich – Airplane Flying

According to Wikipedia, Suprematism “was founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia, around 1913, and announced in Malevich’s 1915 exhibition, The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10, in St. Petersburg, where he, alongside 13 other artists, exhibited 36 works in a similar style.” Suprematism followed the Futurism Modern Art Movement. Looking through the work of the artists featured in the first Suprematism exhibition I found I was more familiar with a lot of their work than I’d realised. Even if you don’t know the artists mentioned, you’ll probably find their work or style is familiar too. For more info about Modern Art Movements in relation to each other, I found this timeline: http://www.theartstory.org/section_movements_timeline.htm

Ivan Kliun – Suprematist Composition

The Art Story website explains some of the ‘Key Ideas’ of Suprematism: “The Suprematists’ interest in abstraction was fired by a search for the ‘zero degree’ of painting, the point beyond which the medium could not go without ceasing to be art. This encouraged the use of very simple motifs, since they best articulated the shape and flat surface of the canvases on which they were painted. (Ultimately, the square, circle, and cross became the group’s favorite motifs.) It also encouraged many Suprematists to emphasize the surface texture of the paint on canvas, this texture being another essential quality of the medium of painting.”

Kazimir Malevich – Supremus 56

Other geometric shapes such as triangles, semi-circles, arcs and all kinds of regular and irregular quadrilaterals were also popular. The more I looked at Suprematist works, the more I thought how interesting it would be as a Challenge topic, because, even though the shapes and colours are ‘simple’, and in the case of some pieces, very minimalist, I thought their idea of emphasizing surface texture would appeal to many of us 🙂

Yakov Chernikhov – Suprematist Composition

Enjoy researching it and please share any of your projects with us on the Forum 🙂

Tree Trunks in Snow

Tree Trunks in Snow

Comments 17 comments

I thought I’d make some test pieces for making cards for the Winter fair. Basically, I wanted to work out the best wool and/or fibre blends for making wool tubes to look like tree trunks. I did have silver birch in mind for some, but anything which looked good was all I was after for now. The wool I used for the base was something I got in a bag of Botany Lap waste, It looked and felt like Merino, and after felting I’m failry certain it is, but finer than 23 mic.
I quite like this first one, I used various natural grey blends, but also some nylon on the 1st, 3rd and 5th. I think the first one was made with ‘Lightning’, an artifical white Merino, it looks blue-ish in natural light:

I used a natural blend which Leonor sent me for these next ones. I think the last two also had some white nylon because they have a blue-ish look too:

This is one of my favourites, it has tubes made from various natural blends, though the first one could have some artificial white. I also added some strands at the base after googling ‘tree trunks in snow’ 🙂 What isn’t very obvious is I also used a fine layer at the bottom of a Botany Lap blend which had trilobal nylon in it. It looks whiter/brighter if you look hard, but the sparkle isn’t obvious:

I tried a couple of tubes I made around dowelling, I think they were a bit thin and didn’t have enough colour variation:

I tried a new (to me) wool for this next piece: Charollais. It made a spongey felt. It was quite unusual when it came to fulling, as I rubbed from one direction, like top to bottom, it seemed to undo the fulling I’d done from the other, i.e side to side! I got there in the end, though I probably shouldn’t have bothered! The cream/white wool used on the grey tubes matched the base felt, so ‘diasappeared’, and the tube I made from Finn and Merino just had no definition:

Here’s a close up so you can see the felt texture:

I tried something a bit different on these next two, this first one has the same fine Merino base, but I made the trees out of bamboo paper. A layer of black, with a layer of white on top. The black bamboo paper had two layers, it separated when I was adding out the last tree, and I think that one looks better:

Close up:

This last one was made with a base of Svea X Finull which Zara sent me. I am hopeless at laying out anything which isn’t commercial tops, so it’s not the neatest piece! I tried a skeleton leaf on this one:

I really liked this piece 🙂 Here’s a close up of the leaf:

I’ll probably redo the samples with 23 mic Merino and add unblended trilobal on some to see if it looks like icy snow. I’ll save the artificial white wool for other things, I think the natural creamy whites look better.

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Fine Layers and Shrinkage

Fine Layers and Shrinkage

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I took some photos while I was laying out my first Trilobal Nylon sample last week. They aren’t the best – fine layers of Merino and sparkly fibre aren’t the easiest to photograph – so I don’t have photos of every layer. This is the start of the first layer of Trilobal Nylon:

I didn’t overlap the Trilobal nylon partly because the length of the fibre meant 3 columns fit in the template, and trying to take into account the effect of shrinkage. This is the first layer finished:

This is how it looked with the 2nd layer of nylon on top, you can see I used quite a lot:

This is after two fine layers of Merino were added:

And this is when the four fine layers were added, just before I felted it:

It’d be good if there were some large, waterproof scales to use durinng felting, so the weight of layers could be worked out easily!

This is a piece I made last month. I got some fabric from a charity shop a while ago, it has some embroidery paisleys and little ‘gems’ on it. The way they are spaced out meant that I could either cut/tear quite narrow strips between the paisley or wider strips to include them for trying a sample piece. I hate waste, so I had a think what I would use the sample for, I thought it’d make a nice coin purse, but even after shrinkage would be too wide. Oddly for me, I actually came up with a solution before making the sample instead of 6 weeks later! If I used an odd number of layers, with 3 across the width, and two along the length, then I’d get more shrinkage! It worked too! This is the whole piece:

It is a chiffon type fabric, it feels synthetic, but I might have to do a burn test. This is one end closer up:

The paisleys are really shiny so not easy to photograph, they rose up and became even more 3d with shrinkage:

You can see the texture and migration more here:

Have you had any brainwaves and found solutions for problems lately?

Felting With Nylon and Soy Fibres

Felting With Nylon and Soy Fibres

Comments 12 comments

I made a few more fibre samples this week. I thought I’d use the same template for all of them to do comparisons. In the end, I only did a ‘normal’ sample and a ‘fulled hard’ sample of Trilobal Nylon for a direct comparison. Though thinking about it, for a ‘proper’ comparison, I should really have used the same colours! Each sample has two layers of the fibre, and 4 thin layers of 23 mic Merino. This is the Trilobal Nylon sample which I felted and fulled in the way I usually do:

Here’s a close up of the ripples/texture:

This is the Trilobal nylon sample I made and fulled hard:

The texture was interesting, especially where I used different colours for each fibre layer:

This next one is Soy top which I dyed, the tops all look nice, shiny, metallic shades, but for some reason, they now look a bit like wet tissue. Maybe two layers dulls the sheen?

The silver end looked quite nice:

My favourite piece was the Nylon Staple sample. It had a really nice, thick texture:

You can see it a bit more on an angle:

At first I was a bit disappointed with all the migration, because it covered some areas:

But, then I noticed there was something quite regular, almost geometric about the migration:

It can always be disguised by using a matching colour, or made a feature of by using a complementary colour. Here is a photo of all the pieces next to each other:

And, for reference, the bigger Trilobal Nylon sample on the template I used:

Felting With Viscose Tops

Felting With Viscose Tops

Comments 11 comments

I was tidying away some felt the other day and remembered that I’d planned to make some felt pieces like the textured nuno pieces I made, but with different fibres instead of fabric. I laid out a couple of pieces the same way, but different sizes. I laid out two layers of dyed viscose fibre, then 4 fine layers of 23 mic Merino. I felted and fulled the first piece, then got my bead board out to full it more. I fulled until it was quite firm, but not stiff/rigid:

I got the texture I was expecting:

Considering the textured nuno, I didn’t expect so much migration, probably because the soft/fine pieces I’ve fulled really hard with fibres before were using white 18.5mic Merino, I thought it’d be less obvious this time:

I changed my plans when I got to the felted stage of the first piece, it looked and felt so nice. So, I decided I would just felt the next piece ‘normally’. Even if I hadn’t already decided that, I don’t think I could have ‘ruined’ this piece by fulling it lots:

The colours and the sheen are just gorgeous, so is the softness and drape, even though it’s only a small sample:

Those ridges/crinkles are because I squeezed it in a towel, then hung on the line to dry! If you look at the blue parts you might see a crease along the edge too, it’s such a light piece, the pegs weighed it down and bent it. Here’s a close up:

You can see the differences in sheen and texture when the pieces are next to each other:

This is the soft piece on the template I used, it started out just a bit bigger than the small box it’s on top of:

And the small piece started out the size of the largest outline on the template:

And yep, those are the same template!

Surface Design Elements

Surface Design Elements

Comments 16 comments

I made an accidental landscape picture last week at the well-being centre. I’d taken lots of the wool kebab tubes in for a play around and thought I’d see how laying them in 2 different directions worked out. I put the middle lot of tubes on first, then the diagonal ones at the top, then filled in the gaps at the sides with a couple more on each end. We were talking about the bag of dyed embellishments I’d taken in and I pulled out some cotton and fluffed it up, and noticing some gaps on my layout, thought I’d add it to show how it felted. It looks kind of futuristic, in a non gloomy or dystopian kind of way:

The mix of fibres is more apparent on an angle:

One of the grey angled tubes was made from weird tops I got in a mostly grey bag of Botany lap, it is a soft natural wool blended with something like Angelina. I never thought I’d find a use for it, but wrapped around a skewer it looked kind of industrial, like something with copper wires poking out. I tried to get a good close up:

I thought I’d try making a piece with the tubes kind of crammed on, instead of laying them out neatly next to each other, because they tend to move a bit and leave gaps. I didn’t over do it, just added two or 3 more than if I’d positioned them. I also wanted to see what the tubes looked like if they were stretched, so I pulled some of them from each end until they were the right size to fit accross the layout:

On an angle:

I liked the contrast of the shiny red and yellow bamboo on the Sapphire blue of these:

These next couple of pieces are made with wool and fibre twists. I used quite a lot of the tops from my weird grey/black and white botany lap waste bag for the twists used on this, plus a few blends of my own:

An angled pic of course:

And a sideways close up:

I thought it’d be nice to show twists used simply because not everyone wants to make something which looks ‘real’, I cut the twists in half, and then made some little woolly balls to go in the gaps:

It has a kind of swaying seaweedy feel to it:

**EDIT: I realised it isn’t easy to visualise making the wool tubes with the kebab skewers, so I’ve done a quick video: