Assorted Fiber projects this weekend

This is me plying my two suri singles while watching "Ice Station Zebra" last night. This is the same yarn I started when i got my e-spinner, Essy, last Saturday. Each single is about 3.5 ounces and I finished plying just as "Where Eagles Dare" started - It was "movies based on Allistair Maclean books" night last night. When I'm done here I'll wind this off into a skein and start some brown huacaya from our boy Evgeny. If Tim gets going on the scarves with his sock machine he might be able to make one using this yarn!

I started a scarf earlier using white suri fiber and red/yellow silk hankies (finished project below). I completed that and it's now drying over a chair. I decided to do another scarf using the suri. I also decided to not be as careful about the fiber layout this time around - which is the chaos in the picture to the left. This is actually a picture of two layers of fiber. I did a total of three and then filled in the thin spots after the first round on my machine.

In case I didn't post this before - this is my felting machine. It's a Celtic Moon Princess. Projects can be up to two feet wide and the length is only limited by what can fit between the rollers. It won't completely full the felt, but it comes awfully close. The last step for most of my projects is to go for a vinegar rinse in my front loading washer. I don't have that in the rental, but I found out today that our builder can hook mine up at the house sometime this week - yay!!!

This is the result of the chaotic fiber layout. I left the edges alone to keep with the primitive or organic look. The locks are visible in the felt which is another cool effect. This will definitely go in my Charlie line of scarves. At some point I'll beat or rub the pattern left by the pool mat. Sometimes I leave it because it can make the lace felt look even lacier.

This is the final result of the suri with silk hankies scarf. You can't see the edge that didn't felt to the body of the scarf. That happened because I didn't do the plastic right for the straight edges I wanted on this scarf. What I did instead was put plastic between the edge and the body so instead of a nice straight edge I had what you see in the last picture.

Instead of folding the stray fiber over to the body of the scarf, somehow the plastic was folded between the body and the fiber. The edge looked straight but obviously wasn't. I'm probably going to have to try and needle this edge into place or simply snip off the excess fiber.

My New Toy!

This isn't directly felting related, but it's my new Hansen mini-spinner. Yes, the slight blurr is from it running while we were heading to Snohomish in the truck. This little beast has a regular wall power adapter as well as a cigarette lighter adapter! It's the quietest electric spinner I've heard and weighs in at around 4lbs. That's a jumbo woolee-winder too!

I've decided to use my Ashford when I'm at craft fairs and such since it's much more what people expect of a spinning wheel AND I rarely have power available. But for the most part this is now my spinner of choice and it's making short work of the suri I'm spinning in the picture.

As for felting - I had to return Chad's book to the library, I'm sure to her relief based on my first hat! I do have a few of her other books and Jorie Johnson's that I will be using as a guide/goad to keep me felting. But I'm going back to my scarves to get some made for Valentine's Day. I've got some beautiful hand dyed silk from Lori Flood and I'm determined to make one scarf from each piece. I'm also going to try 100% suri for one of those scarves.

Suri is the harder of the two types of alpaca to felt, but the results are usually worth the work. I've got a "cloud" of white suri fiber that I will be using for this effort. I'm also going to prefelt some hearts in a variety of colors and sizes to felt my other scarves, both laminate and straight felt.

I'm also not giving up on the hats!!! There's just not enough time in the day - the usual lament.

This Isn't a Habit Quite Yet

I actually finished the hat back on the 1st, at least I took it as far as I thought it was worth taking. Now that the wind and fog have let up I can post pictures. Although before I started this visual and written record I doubt it would have ever seen the light of day, but anyway here it is in all it's hairy glory. I meant to have my sons model it, but they're off cleaning our pastures. If you compare the pictures you can see the amount of shrinkage. What you can't see is how hairy it is, even after trying a sweater shaver on it.

Interestingly it took less time to lay out the fiber and pattern than it did to create the felt. When I make a scarf, especially if I put any designs in it, it takes a lot longer to lay out the fiber than it does to work the fiber to felt. It also took a lot less time to full the hat to this point than I thought it would. Alpaca can take a while to get going, but once it starts to entangle it works pretty quickly.





As can be seen, the ear flap things are closer to being neck warmers, but at least this looks more like a serviceable hat than it did when I started. I could probably get it even harder if I worked it a bit more, but I'm quitting while I'm ahead - on this project anyway.

It isn't quite what I had planned on when I started, but at least it's gotten me felting again.

I think I'll try and find something I can do using a lissome/gertie ball. All my other hat forms are packed and it'll be another two months before I can get them back. But I do have the lissome balls right now - hmmmm.

The first day of 2010 - my family and I are relieved that 2009 is over. It started badly and didn't end very well and the middle part was pretty horrible too! I'm not going to say that 2010 will be better, has to be better or at least couldn't be worse because I feel that's tempting fate a bit too much!

The picture is of my hat that I started a few days ago. I didn't have my camera handy so couldn't take the pictures of wetting the fiber with my soapy solution, rolling it up with the resist and extra plastic in place to keep the sides from felting to each other and then putting it in my felting machine to work for a while.

Once the felt was pretty solid I began working it by hand, rinsing and re-soaping as needed. My guide was how spongey the felt was as I worked it against my washboard.

The "tails" I added were originally going to go on the top of the hat, but I decided that they would also work like the chains on tire flaps. They're in place to keep the ear flap things down. The only problem is that for the ear flaps to act like ear flaps I've got hours of fulling/hardening ahead of me. So I think I'll work it a bit more and then call it good. The "root" of these tail ends didn't take very well so I'll be doing a bit of needle felting to give them a stronger connection to the hat.

Unfortunately the wind and rain have kicked up which is interfering with my picture uploads. The last one I was trying to add was of the back of the hat - it's very long, at least to someone's shoulders - which shows why the ear flaps aren't really ear flaps. I don't think anyone has ears that big or low on their head.

My plan now is to work it a bit longer to harden it a bit more, which will also shrink it some more. Then I'll rinse it in vinegar and spin it dry in my laundry spinner. Then get my husband or sons to model it. It's hairy enough that I'll try and shave it with the sweater shaver I just got - but I have a feeling there's just too much needing to be done for that little tool.

Happy New Year!!!