Wet Felting Fun

I've been having so much fiber fun lately, dyeing, spinning and felting. Yesterday was another big dye-fest, once I get started, I want to keep going. Next thing you know the drying racks are chuck-full and am forced to pause long enough to let the fiber dry. Which gave me a good opportunity to update my spinning/dyeing journal. I keep track of my dye recipes and color blends along with spin combinations and new types of fiber I've spun. For each new submission to my journal, I sew in swatches so that I have a nice little visual reminder.


Once I got the journal caught up with my latest dye blends, I decided to try some more wet felting. I've had this idea for a long skinny scarf floating around in my noggin and thought I'd give it a go last night. I used merino, alpaca, silk, mohair, finn/merino, wenslydale lamb locks and of course some sparkle. I positioned some of the locks so that they came off the edges of the scarf. It ended up working out nicely, with cute little curly locks popping off everywhere.


I love how the silk strands formed beautiful shimmering streams on the topography of the scarf. There is a nice soft hand to the fabric too, with a very inviting textural surface imparted by all the various fibers I used. The other project I wet felted used mostly merino and had a much smoother surface, I liked that look too. But the softness created by this blend is perfect for a scarf. I think I will embellish it further by using some silver floss to stitch patterns onto the surface.


These felted beads are what I like to call a happy accident. I tried one of those short cut methods I read about for scouring fiber...I should know better by now. Some things just can't be rushed. It really ended up taking longer using the "short cut" method! Plus some of my alpaca started to tangle and felt. I was able to gently separate/open up most of the tangled fiber. Some of it, the messiest, I decided to use either for wet felting or felted beads. You can see I went for the beads. I dyed the tangled locks, originally white fiber from Birch at Lonesome Oak Alpacas, adding all my favorite color combinations. Alpaca dyes up so beautifully. I love felting beads, it's so addictive. By the time I forced myself to walk away, my hands were shriveled prunes! I enjoyed it so much that when the tangled locks were used up, I started looking for more fiber to felt. That's when I said to myself, OK Miss, that's enough, walk away! The largest beads are about the size of a ping pong ball, the smallest about the size of a pea.

I hope you are all spinning and knitting up a storm too, it's good weather for it as the temperature begins to drop.
Have a terrific weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa