Felting and Fiber Studio

I am supposed to have the summer off. So far, I don’t seem to have stopped running. So I have nothing new to tell you about. So I am going to share this with you again. I hope you enjoy it again if you have already seen it.  I am at a Demo today. I plan to take lots of pictures and blog about it on July 23. It sounds so far away, but I am sure it will be here the day after tomorrow.

I have been wanting to make a cat cave for some time now. I decided it needed to be bright. I picked some Blue Faced Leicester wool so it would be strong and dyed it chartreuse. Then I picked some purple and magenta for the spikes.

I wanted an oval cat cave. I used my oval hat form to get the shape and gradually sized it up.

I laid out 4 layers of wool for strength and even shrinkage. I put the first side aside, and after laying out the second side, I poked holes to put the spikes through.

After wetting it all down, I wrapped each spike in plastic wrap so it would not get felted down flat.

I covered it with a sheer curtain and rubbed both sides for a while and rolled it for a while, and then wrapped it up, put it in the dryer twice, changing the position of the felt each time.  It was starting to shrink, so I cut out the resist and switched to rolling it in a stick blind. I find the stick blinds to be very aggressive and shrinks the felt quickly.  I did do some throwing, too. Finally, I rinsed the cave out in a bucket of alternately hot and cold water, being quite aggressive with it. I then had to stretch the top so it would be domed. I steamed it to heat it and make it easier to stretch. Mostly, I used a wooden spoon to push in a sliding motion to get the shape. Here it is on top of the resist, so you can see how much it shrank.

Here it is in use; it didn’t take long for one of my cats, Wu, to take up residence.

As a footnote, Wu (the queen of all things) is no longer with us. This is one of my favourite pictures of her. She really liked the cave; we buried her in it, here on the farm.