spinning – Page 4 – Felting and Fiber Studio

Makers Faire

October 22, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 18 comments

Last weekend we did a demo at the makers fair. It was the busiest dem I have ever done. Next year we will take more people. Almost 6000 adult ticket were sold. Children were free. My voice was almost gone by the end of the first day. I wondered if I would be able to talk on Sunday. But years of practice talking too much paid off and I was good to go in the morning and lasted all day.

Jan is on the left for weaving, Elizabeth in the middle doing spinning and weaving and then my place is on the right were I had people making wet felted felt beads.

And a little closer, the elephant was made by Elizabeth on a ridged heddle loom.

This is my how to make a had display

These are the guild sample books. One for sheep, one for other animal fibers and cullies fibers, and one to other fibers. the black at the front is Kevlar.

First Jan dressed her loom, and then started a sample piece for a Viking blanket. She has found information on several way these were done so now she is figuring out what will work best for her.

And this was me most of both days. Jan had a hard time getting a picture of me as I was always surrounded by not just children but also adults wanting a turn.

One of the Leaders form this group came and made a bead so she could use it as a spacer in one of the machines that had some had some metal parts hitting each other.

There was lots of variety. There must have been a doz 3D printers. But some low tech stuff too.

mini tools

Last weekend was a Demo at the Carp fair

September 29, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 18 comments

This was another great demo weekend. It was cool to start and we got to wear our wool. Later we added it to the display. It was lovely and sunny.

I was doing beads again and spinning on my drop spindle. I taught Lynda how to make a bead, just for fun. She is a fellow felt lover at the beginning of her journey.

Jan got a shot of me with some kids. They came in waves so I either had non or more kids than pencils. I stole Jan’s picture from the guild facebook page.

The beads proved useful too. Lauri has an old wheel that she made some new spindles for. they were a little short but also a little wide at the orifice end. We solved it by cutting a bead and using it as a spacer. Sorry I didn’t get a picture.

Linda was not just slacking off making beads she was working on her cool Master Weaver loom. Invented not to many years ago by a man whos wife could no longer use the foot peddles or leavers on a regular loom. Lynda is adding some extra weft for interest. She is sitting on the back side of the loom

Lynda also brought her husband along and he was doing carding. He had a great time making batts and talking to lots of people. He wants to come to more demos. Lynda says she will have to get a family membership in the guild now.

Jan was spinning on Saturday. Here she is winding off single yarn into a wrist ball so she can ply it. Her husband (the blacksmith) made her a tool. She had been steeling his books to wind off her yarn. When she is done she turns it around puts her hand through the middle and takes it off onto her wrist ready to ply. The tool works really well, but it has no name. He calls it a pre-plyer. That is descriptive but not a great name. Woolly Winder would be perfect but that is already taken.

Mary was there with her circular sock knitting machine too. It is a very cool machine.

The most interesting thing I found while out looking at the displays was 2 dye tools. I can’t remember the name of them. They were in with a great cast iron display. I love the painted pieces. I was going to ask about them but the owner was not around.

That was my weekend. I hope I haven’t board you with to demo posts in a row. I will have to get on and make something interesting for next time.

Nuno Felt Scarves and Some Yarn

August 19, 2016 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

I managed to get couple more scarves done this week. I forgot to get shots of them before I wet them but here they are finished and drying. I lightened them so they are more the colour they will be when they are dry. I had to be fast taking the pictures, the breeze was blowing again and my son had to play interference with the turkeys who were too interested in what I was doing.

I started another with the last of the scarf blanks I dyed. I will have to dye some more. I need to add some purple to the inventory.

The other thing I did this week was skein my hand spun yarn so I could get it washed. I want to sell it in small skeins for people to use as embellishments in wet felting.

I have to decide how much yarn to put in a small skein. I measured the yarn I put on the green scarf, The scarf starts out just shy of 8 ft. long. I was surprise how much yarn I used; 404 inches/ 33.66 feet/11.2 yards Or 1026.16cm/10.26 metres. So I think maybe 12yds/11meters in a skein. Some will be shorter because there isn’t 12 yard total but the length will be on each label. What do you think? Pricing it is the next problem.

I am Getting a New Drop Spindle.

December 23, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 25 comments

There is a lady in my guild, Laurie, that make fabulous resin drop spindles. I was very tempted at our guild sale to get one but couldn’t decide and most were top whorl.

You can see individual pictures on her etsy page. I really like the snowflakes and the purple bead flowers. Here is the link to her page. https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/AzureSkysHandcrafts?ref=l2-shopheader-name

I like a bottom whorl spindle so she is going to make me a custom one. Since she is making me one special I have asked her if she could embed a piece of my nuno felt in the whorl. She can, so I will be looking through my stash but may end up making a piece special.

I am afraid I have no new felting to share with everyone. With Christmas coming fast I haven’t had time do any felting. Right now my studio table is covered in presents waiting to get wrapped. No room for felting until that is done. Oh and the cleaning, and the decorating and the cooking ………..

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. Hope you have a wonderful time with friends and family.

Art Therapy, Roving and Wet Felting Class

September 4, 2015 zedster66 Comments 15 comments

A while ago, I was telling you about an art therapy wet felting workshop I was going to be involved with, and showed you some of the wool, fabrics and fibres which were generously donated for it. The first workshop was on Wednesday and was really busy and popular. There are two rooms we can use, so we can have a separate dry laying out area and not have to worry about anything getting wet, we stuck to one room for the first week, this photo is during tea break, but quite a few people stayed to carry on:

I think everybody enjoyed themselves making their pieces of felt, I got quite a few of the blended batts out because they’re looser and easier for beginners to use, and they were very popular. I’m afraid the photos don’t do the felt pieces justice, we’re in the basement with fluorescent lights. Here are some of the pieces made, apologies if yours isn’t shown, some didn’t come out.

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On my last post I showed a photo of some of the roving I’d made myself with a diz and a drum carded batt, I’m not sure how much there was altogether, about 25g, I think. I spun it up one night on a drop spindle:

I didn’t do anything to it, just left it on overnight, or maybe two. When I unwound it, it was soft and loose, and not as thick as the pencil roving, I knitted it into a rectangle with the intention of wet felting it so I’ll show that next time:

Due to popular demand our next online Wet Felting Class starts on September 18th.

It runs for 3 weeks, with an additional 2 weeks of tutor support, so don’t worry if you think you won’t be able to do it because you have other commitments. You can work at your own pace, and we’re there to answer questions and give support and advice for the whole 5 weeks no matter how far behind you are, and you can download and keep the coursework to refer back to as often as you need 🙂 You can find full details on the Class information page HERE, including details of the course content, the supplies you’ll need and also the ‘equipment’ you’ll need. Have a look at our Gallery page to see what some of the previous students made, and we also have some really nice feedback from previous students too.

Edit: I completely forgot to say that last day for signing up for the class is 16th September!

Twist Fibre Festival

August 25, 2015 Shepherdessann Comments 16 comments

This last week end was the Twist Fibre Festival in Saint-André-Avellin, Quebec. Two friends of mine and I shared two booths. I am going to show you our booth in this post and the rest of the show in the next one. This is our whole booth

Judy is mostly at the left and has the wooden stand full of fiber bags. She has lots of hand processed breeds of wool and hand made small batts and rolags in great colours. I was in the middle and had the silver stand and Elizabeth is on the right with hand dyed roving and weaving kits.

We also had two friends helping us. I do not speak French , Elizabeth speaks a little and Judy speaks a little more. We had Andrea ( on the right) to be our French speaker. She was an enormous help and was so good with customers. Here she is with me having fun trying on the Viking hat.

and our other helper, Jan, who is a great sales person. Elizabeth is in the back chatting with a customer. She is the one with the whited pass around her neck.

Now for some more detailed pictures. This is me with the batts and tea cozies and some knitting and plying bowls that my friend Mike makes. On the stand I had the project bags and nuno felt kits and drop spindle kits and hats.

This is Judy’s table and a close up of her hand turned drop spindles and Lego drop spindles.

Down at Elizabeth’s end she has drop spindle kits and hand died roving designed to spin colour changing yarn. She also has an amazing ridged heddle book (on dvd) she wrote and kit put together.

She brought her loom and was working on the kit samples to show people how it works. The multi coloured one is one of the sample pieces finished. You get 2 that size and another small bonus sample pattern.

So that was our set up. What you can’t see was how hot the room was once it was full of people. We just about melted. I should have shrunk a couple of sizes but some how I didn’t. 🙂

Knitting

February 8, 2015 zedster66 Comments 20 comments

I haven’t had chance to do any felting at all recently. With working on the Wet Felting workshop and trying to work out all the details for outside tutors, not to mention having to move the entire contents of my kitchen into the living room, I’ve barely had time to sit down with a cup of tea! Last week during a well deserved tea break (Russian Caravan) I thought I’d look up some How to Knit videos. I’ve been wanting to learn how to knit for ages. I have tried in the past, but always found it hard to keep the stitches loose enough to force the needles through 🙂 I don’t even know how many videos I watched about casting on, but none of them made sense, it was like watching close-up magic or something ‘so you get this, you do this, and … shazam!’ I almost gave up, but then I found Kristen ‘GoodKnitKisses’ and her How to knit videos. This is the Beginner’s Cast on Video:

I did it first time. I couldn’t believe it! So then I watched the ‘How to Knit’ video. That took a few tries for me to feel like I’d got the hang of it, maybe if I hadn’t used some synthetic version of thick and thin pencil riving, I might have been better 🙂 So, being a ‘master knitter’ now, I thought I’d make myself some needles out of dowelling:

Then I went hunting for something to use, and found a bag of raw Jacob I carded not so long ago. I made it into rolags and spun it on my drop spindle. The next day, I knitted it up straight from the spindle. Luckily GoodKnitKisses has a casting off video too. I’m not sure I did the last stitch right, but it isn’t coming undone, so I must have. I was really pleased with my knitting:

I had an electrician in the other morning, so while all the electric was off, I found some spare ends of white wools and mixed fibre batts and started some thick, nobbly yarn for my next knitting attempt:

If you want to start learning how to knit, I would definitely recommend those videos!

Mostly spinning

October 1, 2014 Shepherdessann Comments 11 comments

I have been doing some demos lately. It is much easier to demo spinning than wet felting. This is at the the Richmond fair.

Jan(sitting) and I as Jan makes a skein from her spinning. Gord spinning on the Great wheel.

Jan’s Husband was doing a blacksmith demo.

He made us some great hooks for our wheels.

On the second day this is what it looked like.

We gave up. we packed up early and went down to the sheep barn where our friend Mary who was doing a demo there.

We got to watch some of the seep show.

The red one is a Tunis sheep. I am not sure what the group is.

I must say that most of these pictures are Jan’s. I forgot to take many and they were not great.

A Day in the Life of a Fiber Mill

September 27, 2014 Marilyn aka Pandagirl Comments 16 comments

Last Friday, Cathy (Luvswool) and I took a lovely drive out to Belvidere, Illinois to tour the Illinois Wool and Fiber Mill.

Nestled in the midst of farmland, we were surprised to turn into a homestead driveway. I guess we were expecting a huge factory, but it was a quaint store and small facility crammed with custom made machinery. The idea for the mill started when Jane Zeien’s family purchased two ewes for a 4 H project. The family enjoyed working with the sheep and began raising Cheviot, Hampshire, Shetland and Cotswold sheep. They decided to expand their services to help promote the industry.

The Illinois Wool and Fiber Mill can handle everything from washing fiber, blending, picking, carding, pin drafting, custom dyeing, preparing batts and spinning. All types of natural fiber are welcome unwashed or washed. And no order is too small and each fleece is processed individually.

Jane greeted us and led us into her workspace and into wool heaven.

We were surrounded by fleece waiting to be processed in a variety of breeds and blends and piles of roving in a potpourri of colors and blends.

The picker has a big enclosed space behind it where the fleece piles up ready for the next step.

The carder dominated the center of the room.

Batts can be made on the carder by changing out the parts on the back of this machine shown here making roving.

This is the pin drafting machine.

Depending on the job finishing the wool can be done on the spinning machine, then the skeining machine.

When the tour was over we visited the shop where everything is related to sheep from skins to finished good by Pendleton and Woolrich along with handmade items, books, roving and yarn. If you want to learn more about the mill visit their website http://www.ilwoolfibermill.com/

Of course, we both bought some new wools to play with. One of my treasures was an English Merino wool batt.

Here are Cathy’s new treasures —

Around the Web Spinning Felting and Dyeing

September 15, 2014 Shepherdessann Comments 7 comments

Good morning Folks I am afraid I am still tired form the week end at Fibrefest in Almonte so I will give you some interesting things to go have a look at.