Hobbit hat #3

As promised.. Hobbit hat #3

I worked this one outside in.  I found that I was more prone to getting ridges at the edge of my resist working inside out.. not sure why, probably just that I'm not used to working that way. The ridges were easily enough worked out luckily.  I DID find that the cup and ring design incorporated very easily into the felt working outside in as opposed to inside out, maybe because it all goes slower inside the package.

Hat #3 was going to have silk caps and fibres to embellish the outside so I didn't have to worry about that, and the silk chiffon sari I planned to use is an easy one.. I've used it for nuno before and know the fibres travel through fairly quickly..

Here you can see the resist from hat #1 placed on top
The resist underneath is from hat #2.. but I have added  to the bottom right and around the sides and top to give a little more fullness in the crown.
I also shortened the earflaps - see the pen marks, so this hat would have less wastage than #2

Piece of silk chiffon in roughly the shape I needed to cover one half
of the resist.. scarred a few whisps of merino ontop

Then placed the resist and carefully folded the silk around the edges.
Trimming any excess so it didn't bunch up or overlap anywhere

Filled in the gaps

Adding whisps under the edges to veil them where needed

Layers of merino

Rays fold over, and centre gets filled

Silk caps, tussah fibre & mulberry fibre on top of final layer

After the resist was removed I worked it HARD..
rolling, throwing, pummelling and rolling it with my ridged stick

Before it was fully felted I used hat #2 as a template to mark my cutting line

I have a pack of tailors chalk in 3 different colours, red, blue and
white so can pick whichever will show up best

Trimmed.
Now I sealed the edges and worked it until it was fully felted.

I worked the crown on my hats block and blocked it in the same way as the last ones.. did take pics but picassa, or blogger, won't let me bring them over for some reason..

Not MY colours.. but I like the hat :)

And it suits me from behind lol

Now that I had 'the Bofur' sorted my mind moved on to working out 'the Radagast' :)  more on that soon!

Yesterday I showed you what my dogs were getting upto in the snowy weather.. here are a couple of my favourite snowy weather photos I took

This lovely little finch spent ages here every day just feet from my living room window..
Picking at the nettles and brambles, and eating from the bird table -he was funny when he found a seed he didn't like, he spat it over the edge

Flooded woodland frozen solid.
The woods and fields became very Narnia like, absolutely beautiful