Monday, August 13, 2007

Felt Like Fun

On Saturday my Spectrum Study Group came over and we played with some more felting out on my deck. We had a lovely potluck lunch which T-Man got to enjoy also, plus copious pots of tea. Gotta keep the whistles wet when talking a million miles a minute! Donna and Cathie worked on their felted bead necklaces. Masami, Kirsten and Jo Anne did some nuno felting on silk scarves. It was interesting the way the silk bubbles and ruffles if you leave large areas free of wool. I made some more knitted and fulled leaves (different from the ones from the last meeting) and another small acorn. Hopefully something to use them on will suggest itself eventually. I have a few ideas but they will have to wait until a few things in The Queue get finished first.

Here’s some of what we accomplished:


Clockwise from top-left: my leaves and another acorn, a nuno felted silk scarf, another nuno felted silk crepe scarf, and a piece of merino and tencel felt. All the pieces are wet still so the colour is somewhat intensified. I love the bubbly texture of the felting on the silk fabrics. On the top-right scarf, the merino wool was arranged on both sides but in different areas so they didn’t overlap. On the bottom-right scarf the merino wool was arranged in diagonal lines but only on one side of the fabric. This makes the whole scarf, which was a normal rectangle, go off into a parallelogram with points on the ends. The merino/tencel blend fibre works up into a finely-textured felt sheet because the wool felts and the tencel doesn’t. Very fun. Other projects were several felt bead necklaces that incorporated other glass and plastic beads to great effect. I unfortunately didn’t get any photos of them.

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to my granddaughter’s 3rd birthday party in a local park. It included family and friends and was a very nice day, even though it had threatened rain once or twice. The weather was kind and the sun even came out for awhile. However I actually managed to forget my camera. And my hearing aids! Oh well. I managed. The birthday girl got lots of really nice presents including a bunch of her favourite Thomas the Tank Engine train sets with tracks and cars and other items. Even a collapsing bridge. Her parents set it all up on the living room floor for her after she went to bed last night and surprised her with it this morning to her great delight. Today I babysat her and her 7-month old brother and we played with one of her new toys, the Little Mermaid, which included a whole undersea and castle area. I had to quickly go look up the characters’ names on the web so I wouldn’t sound like such a dunce of a granny. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had small ones so I haven’t seen that movie in its entirety before and darned if I can remember Ariel’s fishy friend’s name! Flounder. Right. And she and I were both singing “Unda da sea” while dancing Sebastian the crab. It was fun. Disney is sure all-pervasive in kids’ lives, eh? Scary.

Now I’m tired and don’t have enough energy to post the finished and now safely photographed New T-Socks for you. Later, gators.

2 comments:

Cyndi in BC said...

Hi Louisa,

Wow, sounds like a great weekend! Felting and friends and birthdays and grandkids. What more could a girl ask for?

Cyndi in BC

Anonymous said...

I don't mean to "rain on your parade" (that is, birthday party..it sounds like a wonderful time. But we've just found out about the lead paint on the Thomas the tank engine toys and have havd to remove a few from my grandson's set. I hope your girl's toys are all lead-free!

The scarves are lovely!

Barbara M. (aka "Avery's Gram")