blending merino – Felting and Fiber Studio

Fibre and Friends

December 14, 2022 welshfelters Comments 21 comments

It’s been a while since I published anything, as I have been going through quite a difficult time. But I was determined to finish the year with a blog, so this one is a bit of an amalgamation! Way back in April, I was lucky enough to be invited on a day trip to Wonderwool 2022 by my friend Debbie. I hadn’t even heard of Wonderwool when she invited me, but when she told me all about it, I couldn’t wait to go!!

For those of you (like me) who have not heard of Wonderwool, it is an annual wool and natural fibre festival that is held in The Royal Welsh Showground, Llanelwedd, Builth Wells, Powys, Wales. It was first held in 2006, ‘to promote the market for Welsh wool and add value to product for small wool & fibre producers in Wales’. The festival has grown over the years, and ‘covers everything from the start to the end of the creative process’. There are exhibits of sheep, raw and hand dyed fibres, yarn, embellishments, equipment, dyes, books and also finished textile art, craft, clothing and home furnishings. Basically, it’s a felt and fibre artist’s dream come true, where like-minded people can find almost anything they need, and it instills a feeling of excitement, much like a child in a toy shop (at least that’s how I felt!) Because of the covid pandemic, it hadn’t run for a year or two, but this year was to be the first event since the pandemic, so there was great anticipation of the resuming of this popular event.

Around the same time, I had been looking for a carding machine, as I wanted to start making my own wool batts to spin. Just before my friend invited me to Wonderwool, I had found a lovely Pat Green Carder for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and I had decided to purchase it. However, the lady selling it (Mary Rogers) lived in Birmingham, England, so I was trying to work out when I could make the drive up to Birmingham to collect it. As it happened, Mary told me that she was planning to go to Wonderwool, and could bring the carder with her! Fantastic, I thought… this is definitely meant to be!! Don’t you just love it when things just fall into place?!

Having made all the arrangements, Debbie and I took the drive up to Builth Wells for the day, and boy, was I totally inspired! When we walked into Wonderwool, I can honestly say my eyes must have lit up! I really did feel like a child in a sweet shop!! There was stall after stall of beautiful fibre, yarn, and all things sheep (not to mention other types of fibre, including alpaca, angora to name a few)!! What struck me first, was the wonderful array of colour. There were exhibitions of different fibre craft, demonstrations of spinning and weaving, with exhibitors from all over the UK. We also had the chance to talk to a range of like-minded people, who were happy to share their tips and techniques with us. Wow, what a wonderful time we had!

One of the exhibitors we spent time talking to, was a lady by the name of Edna Gibson, who explained that she had spent time living in Japan being taught the wonderful art of Kumihimo, an umbrella term for several kinds of Japanese braidmaking that were unknown outside Japan until about 30 years ago. Edna told us that she was instrumental in introducing Kumihimo to the UK. The term Kumihimo is a composite of two words, ‘kumi’ meaning coming together or group, and ‘himo’ meaning string, cord, rope or braid. Whilst most of us will have heard of Samurai, I didn’t realise that the Samurai armour plates are laced together with cords, traditionally Kumihimo braids, which are also tied around ‘obis’, the sashes used on kimonos. Edna explained that she was taught Kumihimo by a very skilled Japanese person, and brought her knowledge back to the UK. The looms used for Kumihimo are known as ‘dai’ or ‘stands’, and are usually made from either wood or bamboo. All the dai are set up with carefully measured threads (as many as 80 strands of fine silk are wound on each bobbin or ‘tama’). The weighted bobbins are lifted and moved in specific repeated sequences to produce each type of braid. Traditionally, silk was used to make braids but today, braiders also use artificial silk or rayon.

This is my friend Debbie, with the lovely and very knowledgeable Edna.

This shows the two types of dai used. Apologies for the poor quality of this photo, but it was taken from one of the information boards Edna had put up…

The top photo shows braiding on a ‘Marudai’ and the bottom photo shows braiding on a ‘Takadai’.

Edna’s braiding…

As you can imagine, it was hard not to go on a full-out spending spree at Wonderwool!! There were so many beautiful fibres on offer, not to mention everything else!! I haven’t crocheted for many years, but was inspired by a beautiful pattern, by Janie Crow called ‘Mystical Lanterns’. I ended up purchasing both the pattern and the yarn! It’s a work in progress, but I’m enjoying the process!

These show some of the exhibits on show at Wonderwool. Hopefully, my scarf will turn out as lovely.

There were so many exhibits and stalls, too many to include here, but this will give you a flavour of a few of the exhibits on show…

To be honest, I was so busy choosing fibre to purchase, I didn’t take any photographs of the actual stalls!!

At the end of the day, I met up with Mary and her friend, to collect my drum carder. It was lovely to share a coffee and a chat with her, and she was able to share the history of the carder with me. We parted the day friends who share a passion for fibre, and agreed we would definitely meet up again at next year’s Wonderwool! We shared a ‘selfie’ before we left…

As I mentioned, I haven’t posted for a while, due to going through a very difficult period in my life, which resulted in me not having the energy or inclination to do any fibre craft whatsoever, so I had not actually even tried out my new carder until quite recently. But when I felt able to resume my spinning, I found it really helped me in a very mindful way. I particularly found that spinning brought me a sense of calm and peacefulness, with positivity and joy.

My first project was back in October, hence the autumnal colours! I put together a collection of merino fibre of different colours, with one part of bamboo in a dark shade. I weighed the fibre first, as I wanted to make two batts of fibre that I could spin ready to weave with.

Having never used a drum carder before, this was all experimental but in the end, I was really pleased with how it turned out…

I didn’t want to blend the fibre too much, as I wanted to have the different colours come through when I spun it. Also, I’d heard about people ending up with ‘mud’, so that was something else I wanted to avoid. Having blended my fibre to reflect my need, I then proceeded to spin it….

This shows the difference when using a flash (on the left) verses no flash (right).

Once I had filled my bobbin completely, I proceeded to wind it into a ball, so I could ply it from both ends of the yarn.

This is the finished yarn, once it was soaked to set the twist, thwacked and dried…

I’m quite pleased with the results. I also feel that my spinning has improved a bit since I posted on her last time! I’m looking forward to weaving with this yarn over the Christmas holiday period. Hopefully I will be able to show you the end product in my next blog!

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy 2023, from Lisa and Alex 🙂

Mystery Fiber – Identify It, Felt It, Take it Further

October 5, 2020 Arlene Toth Fiber Artist Comments 7 comments

Hello all. My name is Arlene Toth and I am a Fiber Artist. It sounds like I am owning up to an addiction, and I am. I am addicted to working with wool. If you don’t know me already, I have a blog called Adventures in Felt. I took up needle felting in March 2019 where they were giving a demonstration at my local haberdashers. The first thing I ever made was a bumble bee from a kit. From then on I was hooked and it just snowballed from there. As with any addiction, I eventually got hooked on the hard stuff, wet felting. The first thing I ever wet felted was a very tiny vessel. I used to paint for 10 years, but painting hasn’t had a look in for over a year. I wonder at times how I have lived so long and didn’t know about felting until now. I feel I have a lot of lost time to make up for. Starting any new hobby is an adventure and I am always up for one of those. I love this so much that I have immersed myself in it completely. I have amassed a library of felting books, watched tons of videos (good and bad), and taken online classes. I am so grateful to those out there that share their knowledge. So I blog about what I learned. As far as I’m concerned, it is all an experiment, and like painting, not everything is going to be a masterpiece.

One of the things I have learned is that making samples is important. Most of the time I just jump right in, but there is value when making small samples especially if you are unfamiliar with the product you are using or the method you will be felting. For instance, I bought some Botany Lap Waste from World of Wool. I ended up with a lot of fiber that I thought was merino as it was so soft and felt like superfine merino, but turned out to be alpaca. How do I know that? Well, I initially felted with some of it, but it didn’t felt like the merino. Fortunately, the item I was making was mostly merino, so this mystery fiber did ultimately felt. I then decided to make some samples as I had a lot of mystery fiber.

Firstly, you need to identify your fiber if it isn’t labelled. The first way to check if it is animal hair is to burn it. Yes, burn it. I used a fire lighter and took a piece of the fiber and it singed and smelled like burnt hair. If it does that, it comes from an animal. It doesn’t matter at this point which animal, but an educated guess reckoned that it was alpaca. Alpaca is a lovely fiber, but some types will felt and some won’t. I have a lovely knitted alpaca hat I bought in Peru which is so soft and warm. So either way I am going to be a winner here.

Now that you have determined that your fiber comes from an animal and it isn’t synthetic, you will then need to felt a sample, step two.

I had three mystery fibers in grey and the black is merino that I used for my control. I laid them out with two layers. I wet them out with tepid soapy water and started the felting process by sanding on boths sides, rubbing and rolling. This is what they looked like.

B was looking as it should for merino, but neither A, C or D passed the pinch test. I kept working at the samples and I finally got them to do a little something.

I can honestly say that if you want to become a good felter, you need tenacity as this is not a quick craft! Not only was this fiber slippery and hairy, it was also squeaky! You can see my lovely control Fiber B doing what merino is supposed to do. Neither A, C or D is suitable to felt on its own. D looked like a complete disaster! Now, some people might think D was superwash, but superwash will not felt, at all, with anything.

So, I completely wasted my money right? No! You can stop right here, but if you know how to spin, you can spin with alpaca to make a lovely yarn. I don’t know how to do that yet! I was going to give some to a friend, but then we had lockdown, so I just labelled the bags as alpaca and put them away. However, if you are like me, you will take it further, step 3.

How do you take it further? You add wool to it. Something you actually know is wool that will felt. People in the feltosphere suggested that. So I did. I got out the blending board and blended the alpaca with merino. I used the black merino for the dark alpaca and natural grey merino for the other two. Here they are all laid out as before.

I then wet everything out and felted as before. As you can see below, adding the wool made a huge difference and made for a better felting experience.

Here we are above drying out in the sun. They felted better than expected, especially D. Here is the final outcome below.

Sample A) From 9 squares to 6 squares square, took the longest to felt, hairy, and has some fine holes in it.

Sample B) From 9 squares to 6 squares square, was the quickest to felt. Sturdiest and best felted of the three.

Sample D) From 9 squares to 7 x 6.5 squares. I couldn’t get it down any more than that, but considering it was falling apart on its own, this is a good result. Has some holes, but more like superfine cobweb.

This is the condensed version of 3 blog posts regarding this mystery fiber. My conclusion is that I shall only keep sample C as it felted the best with the merino. The other two will be used for spinning, once I learn how to do it! So, if you get given some fiber that you are unfamiliar with, make a sample and see what happens!

First Quarter Challenge

March 28, 2015 zedster66 Comments 16 comments

I thought I would try blending some tints and shades for the First Quarter Colour Challenge. And yes, I did have to look back to Ruth’s post, I wanted to say ‘lights and shades’ 🙂 I chose pink Merino because I have an abundance of it and didn’t really care if I messed it up and got something awful! I used ‘Hot Pink’:

I kept it simple, I blended 3 parts pink with 1 parts white, 2 each of pink and white, and 1 part pink with 3 parts white. The original is on the left: