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Bird House Time

Bird House Time

Comments 28 comments

Spring is on the way and its time to start thinking about birdhouses. I have an Easter show. Not much in the way of felt really sells at this sale, it’s mostly about food. Bird houses are the exception. Here they are ready to put to the decorations on and then be put together for felting.

bird houses ready to decorate

This one has its decorations started

start decorating

That is as far as I made it. they have been sitting there for most of the week waiting for me to get back to them. I have hopes for this weekend and when they are done I will show them to you.

the wool I used I died myself. It is sold as washed gray Romney but it is really brown and white. If you card it without dying it, it does end up looking gray.

Undied ronmney

Here is what it looks like if you dye magenta, purple and chartreuse.

dyed romney 2

I love the way the “gray” wools dyes. all the mixed shades you end up with. A spinner friend says its called depth of colour, so it’s not flat.  I wish I could find other breads of wool that were that varied in colour to dye.

 

Grey Wools and Banana Fibre

Grey Wools and Banana Fibre

Comments 16 comments

Sometimes, the wool and fibres I’m using don’t felt the way I expect them to. This was the case recently when I tried banana fibre with grey Suffolk wool tops. We often say there’s no bad wool, just the right wool for the job. I’d say that was true for wool and fibre combinations too. The banana fibre I used came as combed tops, but I fluffed it up and placed hair-ball like bits of fibre dotted around on top of a couple of layers of the Suffolk. I really didn’t expect the result I got, it was the most unusual effect I’ve seen with fibres and wool so far. Although the banana did felt onto the Suffolk somewhat, it wasn’t firmly attached and gave interesting cobweb like results. The banana fibre in the top right corner reminded me of the compact cocoon-like spiderwebs you find in crevices. Or all over trees and fields after flooding (eek!) 🙂

I finally got around to trying out Ann’s bird pods this week 🙂 The first couple of layers are grey Merino, then I added lots of raw Gotland locks around the edges and added a couple of layers of Gotland roving that Kaz sent me a while back. To finish, I used some carded Gotland fleece and a few wisps of banana fibre. It is about 11.5 inches tall and about 7.5 across the middle. I mainly get small birds here, so the hole is only about an inch in diameter.

There are a couple of new uploads in the Tutorials section of the site. The first is How to make roving from silk hankies on the Fiber Preparation page, and on the ‘Other‘ page, is a short guide to taking photos of felt and fibres. They are both in PDF format and can be downloaded.

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