Felting - a new obsession -

I wanted to take a moment to share about a new obsession of mine – one that requires so much more time than I want to give to it!

But I love it –

FELTING

I shared a bit about the delightful class I took with Emily Falconbridge during Spark and how we felted soaps – so easy [relatively quick] and just plain fun! I’ve followed Em’s blog for years and it was such a pleasure to learn from her IRL – so of course I jumped at the chance to take her on-line [wet] felting class at BPC. My first dilemma was finding roving that was easily available and wouldn’t break the budget. [We have a historical hardware store downtown that has it – it’s pric-eeey,] but there’s this Yarn Shop

that I’ve been wanting to go in - not too far from work, so I headed over there during lunch one day. And wow! Wish I’d taken a photo of the walls of lovely wool that she had! Delicious! She has just about anything a person could want! Most of her wool is from sheep in Tennessee, and she also has some alpaca [sooooo incredibly soft – although, I don’t think it felts so well] and she’s dyed it in just about every color imaginable. I pulled out basket after basket to choose my colors. Since the ones I chose were dyed straight off the sheep [lol] she put it through a ‘carding’ machine

[she called it something else] to comb it and separate the fibers a bit. Love how it goes in as a rope and comes out so ‘flat’ and usable.

At the end of my hour there [yes, I had to take a little extra lunch leave that day] this is what I ended up with: 4 glorious ounces [a plastic grocery bag full] of roving for about $10.

[She gave me a discount on one ounce.]

LOVE IT. And while I’m also loving the idea of all the projects in my class I’ll admit that I’ve only had time to execute one and I think I’m addicted to these flowers.

So easy to make [although they do take a little time.] I’ll be making lots of them throughout the winter months. [I put a pin on the back so they’re wearable.]

I’m happy that BPC now allows their classes to be accessed forever once you’ve taken them. No more printing of all the instructions and finding a place to store it all – now I can just click on the site and bring them up whenever I’m ready to work on something.

And working with all this wool is making me itchy to get my needles out to knit once again [not that I’ve ever knitted with wool – I’m just not that good. LOL]