The Art of Felting

Say you had something you'd knit out of 100% wool, and you had knit too loose or you just weren't happy with it. Or you had made it with original the original intention to felt it. And then, imagine you had no idea how to felt.

To put it simply, felting is shrinking your knitted or crocheted pieces of fabric. Don't confuse it with needle felting, which is a different thing entirely.

I made a bag a few months ago, out of some wool yarn I had spun. I must say, my knitting has improved since then. The bag was loose and the stitches uneven.

My mother had knit a headband out of purple and grey yarn she had spun and plied. It was too big.

We decided to give felting a go. We had no idea how to felt. So we looked it up in the most obvious of places: the Internet.

Having found a sufficient amount of information, we got ready what we needed.

A bucket. We used a smallish white plastic bucket, which easily fit our two things.

Hot water. Originally, we just filled it with warmish water from the sink, but we also boiled some and added it in.

A spoon. We used a nice, long handled wooden spoon.

We put in our two items of woolly consistence into the bucket of warmish water from the sink. We stirred with the wooden spoon. When the water was boiling, we dumped out the warm water and added the boiling water. We kept on stirring.

After a while of stirring, we found that the stitches were getting closer together and fuzzy.

My Mom's headband, instead of shrinking, became very very long. It was interesting. It hasn't yet shrunk back to a good size for headwear. I suspect a lack of balance in the Force.

However, my bag continued to shrink and get awesome. I can't help it, I guess I'm just good at this sort of thing.

Isn't it cute? I'm very pleased with it. I put it on a towel and shaped it to the shape I wanted, and stuck a couple of pins around the edges just for good measure.

Well, this fiber extravaganza went well! For me, anyway... Hopefully, Mom's headband will fix itself... If not, well, we'll think of something!

Felting is fun and easy. We stirred it for probably about 30-40 minutes. If you're not too worried about ruining your project, go for it! You might want to practice on a couple of swatches first, though.

I look forward to future felted projects! I'll post pictures of the bag when It's dry and I've added a couple of touches to it. Like a clasp.

Spinner's Beginning

As some will know, I am well learned in the art of fiber, this being yarny stuff like knitting, crocheting, weaving, spinning, etcetera.

Recently, one of my favorite pass times is spinning. I haven't been able to much since I learned how to in July, but this past Tuesday me and my mother went to the Shabby Sheep yarn store in Dallas. We bought some roving and drop spindles. We got four different colors of roving: dark brown, light brown/grey, lavender, and a sort of reddish-orangish-brownish. After making out purchase, we sat on the front porch of the Shabby Sheep and practiced our spinning. We had lots of fun!

I've been making some 'art yarns' out of scrap wool I bought. I'm almost out of the scraps, but then I'll just keep spinning in solid colors.

Here are some pictures of what I've spun since July!

Here's all the yarn I've spun so far. Oldest to newest going from left to right. You can see how I'm improving...

This is my most recent. It's an art yarn, and at 58.3 yards it's the most I've ever spun.

This is the one I did on the porch of the Shabby Sheep.

Another skein of artistic randomosity. I did this almost two months ago, but I didn't take it off my old drop spindle until a few days ago.

Just a little scrap of yellow-orange yarn. I probably did this in all of ten minutes.

The first art yarn I did. Half it's already been used on a weaving.

This too is leftover from something. This was the second yarn I ever spun. I wasn't very good at it yet...

This was just a little sample of wool I had that I made when I was bored, and to keep my skills up to speed. I still wasn't very good, and I spun it really fast.

Ah, my very first. I know–– it looks horrible and all. I completely agree. But it is my very first yarn.

This is what I'm working on now. It's another art yarn, and I'm using up the last of my scraps on it.


There's all my yarn! I'm very proud of myself.