daily felt

to achieve a great result in a short time.

All you need is some plastic to lay it on, a sander is very helpful but not a prerequisite, a little wool tops, the finer it is the denser it felts and the less fluffy the edges are. A spray bottle with some soapy water, liquid soap is fine.

Lay out a very fine circle of tops for the color of the inner heart, on top of that lay a slightly thicker layer of the petal color. Don't make it too thick or the flower will become too solid.

For the stem pull out lengthwise from your tops a strip of wool as long as you please and place this with the fluffy end onto the center of you laid out wool.  Add a few tufts so it will form a nice green cone into which the flower will sit.

Spray all of this wet and then with the sander moving from the center outwards flatten the wool. The vibrations of the sander will start off the felting process. Now keep sanding for a bit till you see the outer rim of the wool getting stuck together.

Carefully pick it up pinching in the center and hold it over something to catch the dripping water. Now turn it so in your hand that the stem in pointing downwards and the petal upwardes and carefully start to roll back and forth like making a saussage from clay.

The wool will start to hold together and once in a while unpeel the leaf to make sure it does not become a shapeless clump of wool. Squeeze out any excess water and continue rolling till you are satisfied it is fulled well enough.

Make several and wrap green flower wire around the stem for a fun bouquet or sew on a brooch pin for a nice brooch to cheer up a dreary day. But most of all , have fun playing with wool.

And as a little gift to you readers I offer the flower in this tutorial to one of the commenters. Be sure to leave a way for me to contact you and next friday I will draw the lucky winner

So today I made stamps from foam in the shape of leaves and used these to stamp on a felted scarf. These bled a little but still look very nice methinks. And again it taught me quite a bit. Thicker dye, be more precise painting it on and the next one will be to see if a template would work

My friend Julie that I know from flickr was so very kind to send me some alginate. This is a thickening agent for liquids. What will I do with that one might wonder? Well dye of course, but slightly different than the usual way. With this alginate I can thicken my dye so I can use stamps or paint with it.

Today I did my first experiment. I took 3 colors and made them in the usual way, then added alginate. Each color a little thicker to see how and if the edges bleed. I painted fan shapes onto the felt some overlapping and some not. Once done I laid cling film on top and then carefully rolled the scarf ,put it in a ziploc and then dropped into boiling water for half an hour or so. The scarf was wet when I painted as I had just made it for this experiment.

Logically the thicker the dye the less bleeding there is, there was hardly any color blending either, which was a bit of a dissappointment.

For next time I will cut out some nice leaf shapes, but it certainly has great potential.

Coming from flatland I never thought much about the sun shining directly on my house or not. It just was there, no mountain to block it. 

But here the prime place to live is the sunny side, where houses are of course more expensive. Only after living here for a bit do you see what are the best spots and then you realise how well thought out the placement of the huge historical farms is.

Our house has a great placement for the sun in summer, in winter we have no direct sunlight however as we live on what is called the" backside". I have no problems with that but am very gleeful when the sun does return of course. And it has arrived My sun is back, irreplacable warmth, my sweet friend the sun.

Do you see it reflected off the drive way, from there it will creep into the house to deliver it's wonderful warmth. Aaah yes spring is really on the way

Which makes me want to make flowers of course. Here is the first one of a series of flower scarves.

As I was working on my squares I realised I had two colors missing. Dark blue and dark red. So I ordered those and stopped crocheting a bit, very frustrating the teleporter is still not invented

Fortunately the shop where I bought the yarn is superfast with shipping and handling so the fresh balls of yarn were here asap.

Progress so far is this

And then a sweet friend sent me alginate thickening powder to start stamping dye on my felts...what to do first...ok a few squares and then tomorrow some ink stamping experiments

Over time I have made some things I really loved and thus kept for myself, a few of these...beautiful as they are...well they are not ever worn. Once or twice I have had them on and that is it. They hang nicely packaged in the closet...which is rather a waste. So I will try to see if they sell in my shop and will be listing them over the next couple of days.

That would be me...utterly insane. Mitsy made a Babette blanket and she refused to hand it over to me so I had to make one myself. The one here below is by Mitsy and has inspired me to start my own. I so love the geometric colorful pattern. I put the balls of cotton in a bag and when switching colors just randomly grab a thread...a geometric rainbow can only add happiness on the gloomiest of days

I hope it will not take me too long or there will be total chaos in this house...even worse than the usual chaos

As you can see my squares  are crocheted open as I want it to be a summer blankie, for when I hang out in the garden and the evenings are a bit chilly. The one Mitsy has made has only little holes at the diagonal.

Well ok no pictures of actual skiing going on as I was...welll...skiing

But the first picture is of where we didst ski, with great delight and pleasure.  No waiting lines for the lift, no crowds on the slopes and only 10 minutes drive from home...

The views on the drive down home alone are worth driving up here for. Fortunately one of the boys has a friend who lives up here so I get to drive this beautiful road up and down often when they play together. This time I was not driving so I could take some pictures.

A while ago I thought up a little game to play with the EST group, just for fun. It is called the sales faery game. The sales were low, the winter cold and bleak some cheering up was needed. So I set free the very first little faery and she flew round the group faster than lightning. Every new owner made her own version to be set free for a very small sum for the next one to catch. Since I set the first one free and there can only be one flying free I would have to wait till the very end to close the circle, but there are still those out thew\re wanting to catch one. So no fary for me

Frances thought this was a little sad for me so she sent me one, and a super cute one it is too! Now just hope she is a hard worker and brings me many sales

A while ago I had bought beautiful yarn and started knitting a jumper, this was super thin yarn. So knitting took for ever and I kind of lost heart after a one day stint of knitting for hours on end. After that I managed to finish the main body but the arms....well...sigh...

Then in the mean time I knit an other jumper with selfstriping noro yarn, which was much more fun as the stripes kind of push you along to get to the next color.

Leaving the first jumper half knit is not my style however so I started on the arms and after having done a little bit discovered I had not picke up the same number of stitches on both sides, frustrated I unraveled them again and had a sudden luminous idea. Sew on the sleeves! And a collar and hoody! Now there is something which is much more fun!

Yarn I love spinning too but then have a problem of what to do with the yarn, knitting is a bit of a bore, though they knit up beautifully. So this time I made a fun felted scarf with some yarn I made.