Perseverance…

I am not a felter.  I admit it.  I adore the loom.  I adore the sewing machine.  I HATE the physical labor necessary to make good felt.  Sigh.  I know I’m going to get letters.  But in reality, I’d rather thread 2000 ends through a loom then spend the hours I just did making panels for the jacket I want to make. And no, I’m not buying a rolling machine…

Backstory…

In October of 2010 I attended the NY Sheep and Wool Festival, actually I was teaching but no matter.  I bought the most beautiful “crazy ball” of Corriedale Finn Rambouillet Cross wool dyed by Lisa Merian from Spinners Hill.  It sat in my closet until February of 2013 when I was teaching up in Northern California and found myself in Thai Silks.  They had a sale on certain colors of Silk Chiffon.  I called my son back in NJ and asked for a photo of the crazy ball.  (Forgot I had already posted it in my blog… duh…)  I found a lovely silk chiffon that sort of reminded me of the colors and bought five yards so I could make a felt laminate.

And so in March of last year, I began to layout the crazy ball over the silk chiffon, planning to make the panels for a jacket from felted wool, partly because I wanted a sample of a jacket made from felted wool, and partly because I really liked the colors.  And I had never made felted panels for a garment.  Silly me.

I have huge respect for felters.  They have arms of steel and a solid constitution, and I am just a lowly weaver who has decent upper body strength for a 58 year old, (I can still stand on my head in yoga) but endlessly rolling felt panels in bubble wrap around a pool noodle is just not my thing.  Before anyone says, “You should have used Merino”, you are correct, I could have probably cut my felting time in half by using Merino fleece, but the crazy balls didn’t come in Merino, at least I didn’t think so back in 2010, and that’s that.  I had what I bought.

So I made the front and back panels, and blogged about it. Here, and here.

And then I moved onto other things.  The novelty wore off and the pile of felting supplies got dumped in the corner and I glared at the pile distastefully every time I had to vacuum around the pile.

And so part of my January 2014 resolution to finish the stuff I’d started was to finish the panels of felt so I could actually construct the jacket and clean up the felting supplies and put them back in the attic where they belong.

I engaged the help of my brand new intern.

I doggedly kept at it, felting two sleeves, two bands and two pocket panels.  I resorted to using the dryer for that last 10% shrinkage.  I found a million things to distract me other than stand there and roll felt panels.  I finished everything this afternoon.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the beautiful crazy ball was only about 2/3 the colors on the outside.  By the time I got down towards the beginning, there was no periwinkle blue and no burgundy color. What I was left with was largely a pile of combed roving in greeny golds.   So I managed with what I had, and I think I can make this work.  I’m putting the rest of the roving in the “to spin” bag…

I pinned all the panels onto the dressform.  I haven’t decided if I like everything or not, but now I’m at the stage that I adore, the make it work stage.  I’m a great garment maker and I am looking forward to turning this pile of wool panels into a garment.  And I’m really thrilled to be finally able to put all the felting supplies away.

Meanwhile, I washed the long runner I wove from the leftover 8 shaft Matelassé warp from the Robyn Spady workshop, from May of 2011.  It is really too narrow to cover any of my furniture as a runner in an effective way, but I have this bell pull hardware floating around in my studio from a bell pull I wove out of coarse wool, probably in the late 70’s, probably one of the first things I ever wove on my new Tools of the Trade loom.  I cut off the coarse wool fabric and the hardware fits perfectly on the runner.  It sort of looks kind of cool.  I just have to find some narrow space in my house that doesn’t already have some artwork on it…

And last night, when I could roll felt no longer, I curled up with my knitting, determined to finish a hat I started out of the remnants of fibers from the Abby Franquemont workshop from May of 2012.  I’m on a roll.

Backstory:

I took a class through my weaving guild, on drop spindle spinning, with renowned spindle spinner Abby Franquemont, author of Respect the Spindle.  The class was fun, and Abby gave everyone in the class, all 18 of us, piles of small quantities of various spinning fibers to try.  There were all kinds of wool, handpainted roving, tencel, and silk hankies.  I came home, looked at the pile and in June of 2012, I dug out my electric drum carder and made all of the piles of assorted fibers into four large batts.  Over the next year I spindle spun a couple of the batts into lovely two ply yarn.

I saw this pattern for a knitted Tam in a Knit Picks book called Reversible Basics.  What this has to do with Reversibility I haven’t a clue, but I liked the pattern for the Tam.  And I could use a new hat.  The one I’ve been wearing dates back from the mid 1980’s.

So in between running texts with a couple of girlfriends, I happily knitted my Tam and posted it on Facebook, both in progress and the finished hat (note that cell phone selfies aren’t the best images…).  I like this finishing up of stuff I started way too long ago.  I still have a couple of batts left to spin, and I adore the yarn it makes, but I’m willing to put it away for now and enjoy my new hat…

Stay tuned…