And Now for March!

Unbelieveable!  It's now March - where is the year going?!  We were busy in February - clearing the fallen trees in the pasture, repairing fences, working on scarves and hats, taking fiber to Superior Fiber for processing into roving and yarn.  Not to mention making more cheese and taking care of the farm and the kids etc.  Oh- and the day job, can't forget the day job. 

Thanks to my day job I spent two sunny days in San Leandro, CA learning how to safely climb ladders and drive defensively.  The upside is I get to see if I get a discount on my insurance since I passed the driving class.  Yay me!

This weekend I'm headed to a three day retreat focused on spinning with my Hansen E-spinner.  It's the first spinning lesson I've had in YEARS, if not actual decades!  I'm very excited about it and can't wait to be on my way tomorrow!

I mentioned that I spent Frideay making scarves and hats and I actually have the pictures to prove it.

hat and scarf ensemble

This is a matching hat and scarf made from beige fiber from Samson.  I thought it needed something so needled on the flower and leaves.  The two were created using warm soapy water - the scarf was rolled in bubble wrap and the hat was made "on a ball". 

I made four sets of matching hats and scarves including the black hat on the right.  I'll post pictures of the other two as soon as I take some decent photos - the pictures I have are terrible.


I also found a wonderful scarf idea in the handbook I got with my new felting machine from Anne Vickrey Evans (FeltCrafts).  These are two scarves, silk, that started out the same length and width.  I used white fiber for the scarf on the right and brown for the other one.  They were rolled on the machine and then fulled in the dryer.  Besides color the only other difference was the amount of fiber used - I used very little for the brown scarf and quite a bit more for the other.

For the scarf on the right I used a navy blue dyed fiber and filled it fairly full.  I'll have to add a finished picture when I get it along with the picture of the scarf I filled with black fiber - that one is pretty amazing.

I'm also working on more fish and have decided to try a slightly different approach - insted of felting the tail and fins as part of the body work I'm going to needle them on after the body is complete and stuffed.  Along with the lips, eyes and other details. 

My goal is to make a bunch that I can take with me when I got to Detroit for the rest of my training in April.  I'll be there six days and this should give me something to do - plus I can always bring my e-spinner and fiber (-:

Hats for the last few days

And yarn.  I'm plying the singles I spun up last year at the Redmond Market - around making a few more hats.  I had some leftover hearts from a scarf I made a while ago and they worked perfectly as prefelts.  This is a bit on the small side, but I think it's cute.

I've got the pictures of the start of this when it looked like a big, green, fuzzy blob, wrapped in the nylons and this is what it looked like as soon as I took it off the ball.  The shiny stuff you can almost see inside is from the thin layer of silk hankies I used.

Here is my son, Edyk, modelling (mainly so he can stay up and watch some TV).  The highlights from the hankies are a bit more visible.  This is also after it took a "hand wash" tumble in the washer (front loader - yay).

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!!!

All Journeys Start with

one mess - no that's not right, but rather appropriate if you could see where/how I'm working in the rental house. This is a picture of our April Fool's Girl - Katya. She always brightens my day and her place at the top of my first entry seems appropriate.

Now to business -

Jumping right in seems to be the easiest way to start - we've had alpacas for about five years now and I've been seriously working with the fiber for the last four, or so. When I say "seriously" I mean beyond spinning a few pounds here and there. Even with the three geldings we started with, it was obvious that "here and there" wasn't going to get the fiber used up. I refuse to be a typical fiber farmer (sheep, cashmere, alpaca etc.) who has bags and bags full of fiber from years of shearings that don't get used.

I'm happy to report that by March of 2009, I actually realized I WAS ALMOST OUT OF FIBER! Since then we've done our shearing for the year plus one of my neighbor farms gave me a bunch of fiber so I'm all set - for a while anyway.

Because I work full time in addition to the farm and fiber work it's sometimes easy to lose my energy for fiber work. So to try and help myself, and make more product for sale, I'm challenging myself ala "Julie and Julia". Except that I'm starting with the book of a very funny felter, Chad Alice Hagen (http://www.chadalicehagen.com/). Her book "fabulous Felted Hats" has designs that are usable for a variety of styles both practical and whimsical as the spirit moves me.

Because I have an abundance of alpaca fiber it's what I'll be using. But that's about the only thing I'll be changing from her directions - at least on purpose.

So I'm starting with Chad's template for the "Explorer Hat" because my contractor (our contractor for rebuilding our house from a house fire back in September) has been asking for one for so long I'm finally going to make him one. I usually use DHL or FedEx envelopes for my resists/templates, but all of that was packed up when our house was cleared for the rebuild. So I'm using 3mil contractor garbage bags instead - they seem to be heavy enough for what I need and they're definitely water resistant.

I'm in Washington State and it's nice to have the sunshine you can see reflected in this picture. Plus the rental we're in is on the cold side so the sunshine is doubly welcome.

Now for the next step - laying the fiber out. First one side then the other. I tend to get turned around when it comes to making sure the resist is on top of the fiber to make adding water easier.

These are my two 3 oz piles. I have to remind myself this isn't front and back like I would normally do. This is for the left and right sides. Even with that mantra running through my head I still almost screwed it up -sigh.

I'm using fiber I had processed into batts many years ago. It's pretty hairy and made up of both alpaca and llama fiber, but it still felts well, even if it does take a bit more work than my blanket fiber does.

I suppose I should explain a little bit about alpaca fiber - there are many claims about it being finer than sheep wool and four times warmer etc. I don't know if that's ever been proven. I love it for the simple fact that it has no lanolin. When I shear I break it down into two, sometimes three grades - blanket (prime or first), upper leg and neck (seconds) and junk. I only do the seconds for fiber that is outstanding. I have an embarrassment of riches for both suri and huacaya fiber so I can afford to be picky.

Here I've laid out the four layers of fiber - each layer is set at 90 degrees for the preceeding one. This will add to the strength of the resulting hat. At least that's the plan. I've "patted the bunny" as Chad calls it to see if I can identify any thin spots - I'm still working on this part. I usually don't see the thin spots until after I've added water. After I lay out the other side I'll try dry felting (rubbing the fiber without water to start the felting process). Then the warm, soapy water and the real agitation begins - both mine and the fiber's.