The Fiber Fairy

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January 09, 2005

Good Clean Fun

We have a tradition at my house to do a fun craft (or science) project. Today was the birthday party for my eight year old and we made felted soap. We had a lot of fun. There was lather everywhere - probably the cleanest craft project we have ever done. There were about 12 kids and we did about 13 bars but three of them didn’t come out very well. I think after doing it for an hour, we hit a wall and I couldn’t make the last three felt to save anyone’s life. I had done a test bar several days ago that felted in about 15 minutes. Factoring in kids made it a little messy and much more difficult to get the slippery, soapy fiber to stay on. We started out with the bars in knee highs so the designs would stay in place - very good idea. There are instructions with pictures at the place where I ordered the roving from. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how much fiber I would need, so I ordered two bags of the Felter’s Candy from Mielke’s Farm (scroll down to see an example of the sampler). Now I have 1 2/3 bags left. What to do, what to do. I have to look around for another straight up felting project to do. Up to this point, I have only “fulled” yarn which is based on a knitted item that is then washed all to hell. Real felting starts at the roving stage. I think I like fulling better because you can just stick that in the washer and let the machine do the work.

On the scarf front, I finished my older son’s scarf - three by three ribbing. It is made from mystery market yarn and is amazingly soft and masculine. The scarf for my middle son is also market mystery yarn, although this feels to be at least 100% wool if not wool and camel or mohair mixed. It was this HUUUUGE hank of grey and pink striped yarn that bordered on ugly. Knitting it up though, the striping has disappeared and it is just great! Very soft. This one is also ribbing (three by three) except instead of a purl section, I put in a garter section. This is also a nice manly pattern. As soon as I get this one finished, I am going to make a swatch to test the felting factor. If it felts like I think it will, it will make a great pair of fuzzy feet.

Oh and I have GREAT news! My sister has her own kiln now and is back to making stitch markers. I got Lisa Joy’s sheep in the mail on Friday. My sister is still a bit nervous about selling them but she is working on developing some patterns for round bead markers. You can see a bit of her other beads here.

I thought I would throw in a bonus picture of the LOYM that Wendy and I stalk (look carefully for Wendy in the picture!). We went to the market on Saturday and his table was FULL! I got some really pretty brown camel/wool that has a tiny bit of colored bits here and there - hopefully, it will be a sweater for my middle son. I also got some nearly roving bulky wool for some sort of felted project (what, you buy yarn FOR a pattern?, pshaw, I just buy yarn) and some slightly-ugly-but-not-too-bad sock yarn.

Posted by DebC at January 9, 2005 09:39 PM

Comments

Posted by: wendy at January 9, 2005 11:37 PM