natural wools

The Great Fish Creation

February 25, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 21 comments

The is a guest post by my friend Jan Scott. She is my guilds excellent Librarian, a weaver , spinner and a felter, sewer. She is also my fabulous massage therapist. This is the story of her giant fish cat cave.

This is Miaka Scott-Martin

She has informed us for almost 20 years that she is the center of the universe and we must obey. Now!! So to create a cat cave worthy of such an illustrious being was a bit of a challenge. I could not do a rock no matter how gneiss it was (a type of metamorphic rock with a banded or foliated structure, typically coarse-grained and consisting mainly of feldspar, quartz, and mica. Pronounced Nice) so I spent about a month looking for inspiration finally deciding that I should make her the Cat buss from My Naboure Totoro. Then I made the horrible discovery, someone had already done that!!!

Ok rethink, besides her love of cardboard Vehicles, Sports cars (16th birthday), Dune buggy (17th birthday) and Vespa (18th birthday) what does she really like?

She can’t have anything she needs to drive herself since by her 19th birthday she was blind. She can’t have anything she needs to drive herself since by her 19th birthday she was blind. Since she fell off the bed we revoked her licence to drive. Humm… Fish have been a strong theme through her life. Usually fish go into her, I wonder if she would go into a fish? What kind would be worthy of her? It would have to be rare, exotic and large (she was the one who insisted her prestige did not fit in a mere cat carrier she wanted a mid-sized dog carrier. She is actually a small part Siamese cat, at least in bone structure if not colouring.) Off to the internet to look at weird fishes that Miaka might like, so the coelacanth project began. A scale of reference for there size!!!

Ann should have known something was up when I ordered a lot of wool in our group shopping.

Now for the good stuff: Felting commencing now!!

We arrived at Carsonby hall for the workshop. Ann had pre-set up the hall with two 6 foot tables for each of us. Then went around to help each of us create our resist shape. As you know the resist has to be bigger than your finished project because the felt will shrink as it increases cohesion. As befits the center of the universe, I wanted this to be a very big, thick, strong, fish! The resist was almost the length of the table so when the tail was added it just fit diagonally across the 2 6 foot tables.I divided my fibre in half and then divided each pile again from there. I layered out in thin layers working length then width and repeated (many times). This meant I was a bit behind the rest of the class. I had thought about adding the Fins like a book resist but decided it would be faster to add them afterword with needle felting. I had also thot about gills but decided that would have added more time too.So the process was lay out one side apply patient patting and massaging until it started to coalesce and then get help to move that out of the way while I started the second side. Massage side 2, flip wet and position the resist.

Rap edges of side 2 over the resist, position side 1 on top of the resist and side 2, wet, massage, flip. Smooth edges over fish. Reassess. Add more dark to the top (I know I should have added it before the water but it was still only holding together a bit so it was worth the try – and worked!)

Now more massaging, moving from Vibrations to Effleurage and finally starting petrissage! I can’t wait for Tapotement but It will not work if I rush!!! Now it’s time for rolling gently then with more enthusiasm first in one direction then the other; lots of flipping of fish.

My Hubby arrived with my camera just in time to help roll the fish some more. It’s good to have help!!!

Because of the scale of my project, I was not looking at the car mats that Ann had suggested. Instead I found the runner that goes in the center of a van, good knobiness, folds for transport and it was under 20.00 ok just under 20.00 but wow did it work well!

I had also brought some massage implements, acupressure balls and a knobby foot roller. Not usually looked at as potential felting tools but they worked really well too. The balls were grate for working the mouth after I had cut the opening to remove the resist. I had brought an IT band foam roller it’s much bigger in diameter than a pool noodle but didn’t get to try it out for felting.

At the end of the day I had a wet fish with the resist removed but not felted enough yet. I didn’t get to do the tapotement or the flinging it on the table!!

SO off to Ann’s later in the week to continue the rolling. Finally resorting to throwing it into her spinner (which it barely fit into) then on to the dryer with the spiky balls thrown in to help shrink it. To help it hold its shape while it dried we stuffed towels into the back end and then a blow up beach ball.

I was unaware of how important the kiss of life was in felting but Ann did an excellent demonstration! You can see the acupressure balls on the table beside the fish.

This will give you an idea of the shrinkage we achieved.

Now back to home to start working on the fins, there were a lot of fins. After rechecking my photo reference and counting all the fins I started making fins in an extra-large boot tray (it has a lattice pattern so that helped with felting as it restrained the water from escaping. As each Fin was finished it went to the washroom to be thwapped on the sink edge and then hung up to dry on the shower curtain.

I have a vary patient husband, at least it not nylons drying from the shower rod!!

Monday of the guild meeting and all the Fins were done! Finally, I was ready to assemble the grate fish. I was dropped off early (before 7:30am) set up the library and then started work on needle felting the fins into place.

Unfortunately, I realized as I started the 3rd fin I had the spacing wrong, so detached and started again. Luckily I had only lightly put them in place.

Other than putting on the eyes I had the fish done by the time of the meeting.

It was too big a catch to hide!!!

The Great fish was much admired for show and tell. There was some debate as to whether the recipient of the fish would like it or be able to get into it. (Being blind)

Miaka seemed very pleased with her fish and when shown where the entrance was, went right in. she got comfortable but was leaving her tail hanging out of the fish’s mouth.

The next day she spent most of the morning curled up between two of the side Finns. Later that afternoon her heath suddenly took a turn for the worse.

She died peacefully that night. I am very glad she waited until she got to enjoy her fish even if it was just for one day.

Holiday Exchange and wool order

December 15, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 15 comments

We do a holiday exchange on the forum. We make Felt post cards to share. I can show you the post card I sent to Cathy now that she has it. Do you participate in any fibery Christmas exchanges or challenges?

The only thing woolly that I did this week was get a World of Wool order. I half put in an order because I needed Finn wool to do a cat cave class next month. this is what 40kg of wool looks like when it arrives and one box open

And all ready to go to the vireos people

Inside the box you can see in the open box is a colour sample binder. I decided it was about time I had one so I could see the colours properly.

In the bags are the colours for the 23 micron merino. I am going to have a look for more of the plastic pages so I can put the bagged sample in them. I think they might be for coins. One lady is thinking of ordering yarn to dye herself so got a sample pack of them. They are good large samples, well labelled. They are all sock yarns.

October 6, 2015 zedster66 Comments 16 comments

I think I might’ve mentioned a few times how much I love natural wool, animal fibres and embellishment fibres 🙂 I made a couple of natural felt pieces recently. This first one uses lots of different breeds of wool inlcuding Finnish wool, Gotland, Shetland, Merino, Chubut, Mongolian, Russian, French, Welsh, Irish wools and Portuguese Merino. Plus quite a variety of wool locks and embellishment fibres such as hemp, flax, ramie, bamboo, silk and cotton.

This is a close up:

And this is even closer, the boucle yarn is mohair Marilyn sent me and she also sent me the thick and thin yarn. The gorgeous reddish brown wool was from wollknoll, listed as ‘Russian Camel‘. I think it’s camel coloured Romanov, nowhere near soft enough to be actual camel, and probably 8 times cheaper, thinking about it! The little nepps are cotton nepps.

I love the way the black Bamboo top has rippled on the Chubut here, near the top of the photo:

And this is a closer pic of the Bluefaced Leicester curls at the top of the Chubut in the previous photo:

From one extreme to the other, this next piece uses just Gotland, or Gotland cross wool. It’s about 1 foot by 2 feet (30cm x 60cm). For the bottom layer I used commercial Gotland tops, the second layer was commercially scoured Gotland fleece which I carded, and the top layer is all raw Gotland locks, most of which I got from Zara not so long ago, with the odd few from my old stash. I’m not going to cheat and enter this in the 4th quarter monochrome challenge 🙂

You can never have enough different breeds of wool, I think, so when I saw some being offered in a UK spinners group on Facebook I just couldn’t resist. I told the seller, Wendy, that I loved locks and nice colours and let her choose what to send me, which is a good thing because I’d originally said I had enough alpaca. I didn’t have any like this though:

They were all gorgeous, and I made an album on Flickr if you want to drool, this was another particularly nice one, Mule sheep:

I’m going to take some of the locks to the Well-being centre tomorrow, but I’m sure I’ll be using them myself soon, too 🙂

Naturals and Dyes

July 2, 2015 zedster66 Comments 19 comments

I laid this wall hanging out about a week or so before I got time to felt it, and I think it ended up being ‘upside down’. I wrote down the wools and fibres I used as I laid it out, but I think I forgot a few! Also, I added a few locks to the bottom just before I felted it, but I’m certain that was originally the top:

I added some pieces of hand-spun yarn I’d made mostly from bits left over from carding, I spun them quite thickly, and didn’t do anything with them after wards, just wound them onto card. This one is on the row of white Chubut, a ‘new’ to me wool I got from wollknoll, which felts so nicely and looks really nice too.

These are some cotton fibres: cotton top, cotton fibre and cotton nepps on carded Portuguese Merino, with some soy staple and carded Gotland.

I’ve been dyeing some cellulose fibres recently too for taking to the Makefest at the Science and Industry Museum. I’m getting the hang of it now, but I don’t think my first lot of fibres turned out as nice as I’d like. I did some Viscose fibre recently, and this turned out really nice. These are some of the reds, oranges and yellows:

And some yellows, greens, blues and purples:

I don’t like the way dyeing cellulose fibres wastes so much water with the rinsing, but it is easier for me to do large amounts than it is with acid dyes, not that I had much choice, even mixing up just 500ml each of red, yellow, blue and black was more than enough to dye about 200g of fibre and I had to look for other things to dye so as not to waste it 🙂 I tried dyeing Kapok fibre too, that stuff is practically impossible to wet, it seems to form a ‘skin’ around itself, so dyeing gave some interesting results as it behaved the same way, and when the fibre was separated, the centre wasn’t dyed. This is some rose and lilac coloured kapok:

Dutch and Russian Wool

March 20, 2015 zedster66 Comments 18 comments

I got some ‘Yellowish Dutch Wool‘ from wollknoll, 34 mic ‘not suitable for felting’, it said. It seemed to felt fine for me:

I don’t know what breed it is, I’d guess Texel, maybe someone who’s bought it knows? Here’s a close up of a corner:

I Thought I’d try a variety of fibres again, so the top row is a blend of black Viscose tops and Ingeo, the narrow band in the middle is Fake Angora, and the bottom is black Bamboo and White Bamboo blended.

Different angle:

This is a close up of the Viscose and Ingeo:

And close up of the fake Angora (it has a strange feel to it, and looks kind of waxy):

Another vaguely listed wool I bought was ‘Russian-Camelhair‘. I’m guessing from the way they describe things on wollknoll, that ‘Camelhair’ is the colour, it’s more reddish though. And this is also 34 mic but ‘This wool is especially suitable for felting’. Another guess is that this is Romanov wool. It seems to be double coated like a lot of the ones I ordered. I used Ramie fibre with this:

The circular parts are Ramie that I fluffed up then patted down into little discs:

This is a close up of Ramie just fluffed up and added:

The sun came out as I was taking this, I usually try not to take photos in the sun, but I liked this one:

Have you tried any new wools or fibres lately?

Washing some Fleece

March 18, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

While looking for something else I found some unknown dirty wool. There was lots of nice curls so that’s probably why I kept them. There wasn’t a whole fleece but just a piece of one, enough to fit in a dish washing bowl. Here it is sitting on top of the water before I pushed it under. There is some dish soap in the water.

Here it is soaking. This is a pretty clean piece of fleece the water isn’t very dirty.

Here it is drying, and after it is dry, it is much lighter gray.

The are lots of small bits in the individual locks so I tried just combing the ends and rewetting them to bring it back together.

Unfortunately it did not word as well as I hoped. They are better and perhaps if I used them on some felt or off the edge of some felt they may come back together by the end of the felting.

Have you had any success in getting locks back together?

More New Wool

March 12, 2015 zedster66 Comments 19 comments

I got some wool tops listed as ‘Arctic Fox’, no other info about what the wool breed might be, just that it is 25 micron. It feels really soft, a lot like Bluefaced Leicester, and it felted really nicely too:

Though it’s soft and felts like a fine wool, it does have some wiry bits:

I tried a variety of fibres it, along the top is Soy top, below that is black Bamboo top (L) and Milk Protein (R), then some Hemp fibre, and at the bottom is Viscose top:

Interestingly it made the soy look like hemp or flax, which it only usually does with a coarser or curlier wool:

This is a closer picture of the Bamboo and Milk:

Hemp and Viscose:

Another wool I tried was Skudden or Skudde. I couldn’t find any info on it in English, but there’s a Facebook group with cute lambs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Skudden It isn’t in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, but apparently it is in the Northern European short-tailed family. I used this straight off the batt without carding it first, so it’s a bit uneven:

It felted immediately, it was like it was felted as soon as it was all wet and soapy. It is weirdly hairy though. I was using new netting and thought frayed fibres had come off and got all over the felt. This photo is actually in focus, but the hairiness makes it look like it isn’t. I used black nylon tops, which are actually very black:

This is a close up of the hairy corner:

Close up of the left side:

Further up, it looks like diagrams of cell walls:

It’s different to any other wool I have, it’s unusual, but I like it.

From Raw Fleece to Carded Batts of Wool

February 26, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 27 comments

Our guest author/artist today is Zara Tuulikki Rooke. She generously offered to take us through the process of preparing fibers from her own sheep to use for felting.

As I enjoy felting, I feel very fortunate to also be able to keep a couple of sheep. My four ewes are crossbreeds, from traditional Swedish breeds including the more well-known Gotland, and the perhaps internationally less well-known Rya and Finull. In any case, they do have really nice locks.

In Sweden, the common recommendation (with exceptions for certain breeds) is to shear the sheep both in the spring (to remove the thick winter fleece before they have their lambs and before the summer) and in the autumn (when they return to the barn and start spending more time indoors). The summer fleece (sheared in the autumn) is considered to be of higher quality. It has been grown while the sheep have been out grazing nutritious green grass, and not full of hay and straw like the winter fleece. Below is a photo of their summer fleece, sheared last autumn. The lighter, brown tips are from bleaching by the sun (and probably some dirt as they are unwashed).

My ram is from an old breed called Åsen. His fleece is straighter, without real locks. This breed can have a variety of fleece characteristics and different colours in patches on the same individual animal. My neighbour also has a ram of the same breed, and the darker fleece (black-brown-grey) on the photo below is from one of her lambs.

In addition, I also buy raw fleeces from pure Gotland sheep from a farm in a neighbouring village. The photo below shows some of the variation you can get between individuals, both in colour and in the size and shape of the locks. The lambs are born black, but later the wool turns grey and the once black tips are bleached by the sun. Or rather, they grown an increasing proportion of white hairs – there are no grey hairs, just different proportions of white or black hairs making the fleece look grey.

To a felter, this abundance of raw fleeces must seem like an ideal situation. And I certainly think it is. But, the process of turning raw fleece into carded wool is quite time-consuming. And that is what this post is really about.

After shearing, the fleece needs to be skirted and sorted, to take away wool that is too short, dirty or tangled. The short wool can either be from the head or legs of the sheep, or the result of what we call double-shearing (i.e. shearing a patch a second time to even it out). You usually also need to remove a fair amount of grass seeds and other vegetable matter that gets stuck in the fleece. That can take a lot of time, but it helps to do the sorting on some kind of wire mesh that allows small bits to fall through.

Then comes the washing. I try to get as much washing as I can done outdoors in the autumn, after shearing, up until the temperatures drop below freezing (in the North of Sweden that can be quite early in the season). I leave the wool to soak overnight in net-baskets in an old bathtub filled with cold water. The next day, the water will be really brown, but that just shows how much dirt you can actually clean out from a raw fleece with just cold water. I change the water at least twice after that, allowing the wool to soak for at least a few hours between changes, until the water no longer looks dirty. In my opinion, washing the wool in just cold water is sufficient if I am going to use the wool for wet-felting. During felting it will anyhow get washed again with hot water and soap.

During the winter, I do the washing in my bathtub indoors (which prevents anyone in the family taking a shower/bath for 24 hours), and then I usually use lukewarm water. If the wool is very dirty, I also add some washing powder (the type used for knitted wool items). The main rules when washing, to avoid felting the wool in the process, it to avoid too hot water, or quick changes in water temperature, and to disturb the wool as little as possible.

After washing comes drying. The net-baskets are easy to just lift out of the water and then I usually hang them up for a while to drip off a bit. If I am washing a smaller amount of wool, I often use one of those contraptions meant for spinning water from salad. Then I lay it out to dry, on a wire mesh or on towels on a clothes drying rack. Drying takes time, usually several days. It helps to turn the wool over each day and fluff it up a bit each time. It may seem dry on the surface, but wool has an incredible capacity for retaining moisture.
Finally, you have your washed and dried wool, ready for carding. However, some locks do need to be teased first. This means pulling apart the locks/fibres – and you will probably find even more grass seeds now. The photo shows washed locks, before and after teasing. It´s an extra step in the process, but if the locks are tangled in the tips, teasing really does facilitate the carding.

I own a drum-carder, which really does save time compared to using hand-carders. The wool is feed in under the small drum, which in turn feeds it onto the larger drum, as you turn the handle. After two or three runs through the drum-carder, you can finally lift off a batt of lovely, fluffy, carded wool. Then you can start felting!

It does take a lot of time and effort, and I do swear about grass seeds through the whole process, but each step also has its own charm. I often find it very relaxing to sort, tease and card wool. It provides an opportunity to really feel and look at the locks – and to plan what to do with them. And at the end of the day, when I look at my washed locks and carded batts of wool, I feel really wealthy. Perhaps, in part, because I know how much time and effort has been invested into those locks and batts of wool.

Thank you Zara for such a wonderful tutorial with exceptional pictures to show us the whole process from fleece to wool batts!

Recent Work

October 27, 2014 zedster66 Comments 15 comments

I mentioned recently that I’m doing a Craft Fair soon. It’s this coming Sunday at Victoria Baths on Hathersage Road in Manchester. They also do guided tours that day, so if you’re interested, have a look at their website.
In my post last time, I showed a faintly plaid felt piece which I’d started to make into a diary cover. Here is the finished cover:

I also mentioned a piece of silk I got for £3 a metre. I did manage to use it on a felt piece, but I haven’t made it into a cover yet. It looked a bit nicer and brighter just before the final fulling, but I wanted to make sure it would stand up to years of handling:

I don’t know if you remember a couple of pictures I posted as part of the Jackson Pollock challenge from a bag I was working on, well, I never did get around to finishing the bag, and when I saw it recently, I thought I could cut it up and turn it into a nice sturdy diary cover. So, I did 🙂 This is the front:

And, this is the back:

I always forget just how long it takes to do these covers! Also, because I didn’t have any coloured threads which I thought would be just right, I ‘blended’ my own. I took a strand each of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet embroidery floss and made a 6 strand rainbow. I had to do that for each part I stitched, and I was starting to regret it by the end 🙂

One of the things I wondered after the last fair was whether it was obvious that my stuff was actually handmade felt made from real wool. A lot of my stuff is well felted or nuno felt, so to anyone who doesn’t know felt, it could just be commercial fabric I’ve bought. So I thought I would make some obviously wool natural pieces for book covers. They are made from lots of different breeds of wool and embellished with locks, some mohair boucle from Marilyn, some silk noil, and viscose and bamboo. This one has the most added embellishments:

I did actually use the same size template for these pieces, but with all the different wools and embellishments there was different shrinkage. For this piece, I tried to stick to wools which were more similar: Merino, Bluefaced Leicester, Finn and Corriedale, and there are less embellishments:

If I get chance before the fair, I’ll upload the finished covers to ipernity or the forum.

Raw Fleece Helmet

September 23, 2014 Shepherdessann Comments 23 comments

A little while ago I showed you the prototype for a large felt helmet I was planning and the finished hat. http://wp.me/p1WEqk-2rU now I thought I would show you some of the process. There are lots of pictures.

I used a dog brush to fluff up the ends of the horns. I never manage to keep the ends dry. I taped the resist inside the horn to the hat resist and then added some brown wool under the white so it wouldn’t show so much inside.

I wrapped the horn in plastic again so it wouldn’t stick to the hat.

I added the wool for this side then did the same on the other side and added the raw unwashed Wensleydale fleece form a sheep named Wiki. It was important to use an unwashed flees so I could keep the curls and not have them all felted down. You can see the dirt running off when I got it wet. It took a lot of soapy water to get it wet.

The horns were a not very white after the first rolling.

After washing all the dirt was gone.

Even after fulling it was a big hat. I wanted to put it over a helmet but couldn’t find one so I put a hard hat harness inside so it is adjustable.

And here is me in my hat.

Felting and Fiber Studio

An International Collective of Felt and Fiber Artists

Browsed by
Category: natural wools

The Great Fish Creation

February 25, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 21 comments

Like this:

Holiday Exchange and wool order

December 15, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 15 comments

Like this:

Natural Wools

October 6, 2015 zedster66 Comments 16 comments

Like this:

Naturals and Dyes

July 2, 2015 zedster66 Comments 19 comments

Like this:

Dutch and Russian Wool

March 20, 2015 zedster66 Comments 18 comments

Like this:

Washing some Fleece

March 18, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

Like this:

More New Wool

March 12, 2015 zedster66 Comments 19 comments

Like this:

From Raw Fleece to Carded Batts of Wool

February 26, 2015 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 27 comments

Like this:

Recent Work

October 27, 2014 zedster66 Comments 15 comments

Like this:

Raw Fleece Helmet

September 23, 2014 Shepherdessann Comments 23 comments

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: