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.