A busy week ahead

This is a busy & exciting week for me!

Thursday I am working in my local primary school on a felting workshop. The teacher was so impressed with Rachaels felted gifts last term that she JUMPED at the offer of a felting workshop. Year 5/6 have an `under the sea` topic this term, so we are going to felt sea creatures, using blue, green & yellow; the FeltUnited 2010 colours. I shall assemble them (at home) into a mobile. Im hoping to exhibit the finished piece at Haden Hill House, the closest of our local museum buildings, on Sat 2nd October... we are just sorting out the logistics of exactly where it can hang; Im really hoping that works out, I think it would be a big boost for the kids to have their work publicly exhibited.

Saturday 25th is the charity day on the farm (details on the right) I am SO looking forward to this. It sounds like a lot of fun & if the sun shines for us it will be wonderful! Anybody in the Midlands area, if you fancy an afternoon out why not drop by? If you do please introduce yourself, be nice to meet you. Im doing a very simple felt workshop there... using some of the farms jacob fleece to felt beeds. Im thinking if folks felt 1, or as many as they want, I can string them onto ribbon & they can wear it home as a bracelet... or whatever. Might take a little colourful Icelandic wool too... just incase. Clare is going to be spinning, so it should be a nice afternoon submerged in wooly farmy wholesome goodness :)

AND I have to ship my Peacefelt to my lovely PeacePartner Sam... I shall post about that next time...

xx

Felting frenzy begins...

Wow what a busy felting week I have had! I have barely touched the computer this past week, apart from to check emails / orders etc. - the bare essentials. Last Friday found me hitting my stride, getting back into the swing of felting. I made myself a pair of slippers (working out my own technique for slipper making, these were my prototype) and a table trivet / mat... not sure what to call it really - any suggestions folks? To sit in the centre of the table & protect it from teapot, serving/casserole dish etc.

Drying in the sun

Both made from my Icelandic batts. The trivet has merino fibres & sari silk fibre decoration. The slippers are finished now & Im very taken with them :) Infact, I am this afternoon finishing off a 2nd and 3rd pair... but these ones are mine all mine...

Anyhoo, must run & get some more work done before the kids finish school.

Morefelt goody pics to follow soon xxx

Etsy Front Page

What a lovely few days I have had! A felting Friday - more on that soon. Then yesterday (saturday) morning I had a message from Claudia at NangijalaJewelry to let me know she had included one of my purses in her treasury - which was full of luuurvly things. Got up this morning and the treasury had made the Etsy front page (my first time there)... which brought in loads of views & hearts AND Id sold a wrap & scarf YAY :) Its in the vault now, I didnt see it live as was sometime in the early hours.

Take a peek

View an Etsy Front Page Treasury List - The Vault on Craft Cult

xxx

Ending the holidays...

On Saturday I felted another rug! This one is about half the size of the one I did a few weeks ago - it still took a whole day, but was a lot easier on my back.

You can see the different character of the fleece... this one had a longer staple length, so the rug pile it longer. I like the way it wafts in a breeze & flops around to lie in different directions... The first rug was a definate learning curve; this time I put the cotton net fabric layer in between the 2nd and 3rd fibre layers, so its completely encorporated into the felt and veeery sturdy. I used Icelandic batts again from Alafoss (which I highly recomend by the way).

Good job I wasnt aching too much because 2 days later I climbed a mountain! Literally! We have been weather watching for some time trying to pick a good say to go climb Mount Snowdon in North Wales, Monday looked good so we were up and on our way at the crack of dawn. Gary had climbed the mountain (and the other 2 highest peakes in the UK) many times throughout his childhood... but the kids and me? No...it was our first time. The weather was absolutely fantastic.. couldnt possibly of been better. We were in T-shirts all the time,and just needed a fleece on the summit. Now we were expecting it to be cold, so went with layers on & carrying coats, wooly hats, gloves etc... sensible, but we could of done without all that and took more water if we had known how hot it would be! I took some photos (no suprises there)...

I thought this was Snowdon... but its Snowdons baby bro Crib Goch - looked lovely with the moon just to the side. Im suprised that I didnt actually take a photo looking up at Snowdon... think it was just too big & imposing, I didnt even think to take one.

We walked past beautiful crystal clear lakes - the dogs swam in them of course.

About 2/3 of the way up, looking back.

Nearly there...

These 2 are looking toward the coast approx 15 miles away from the base of the summit stones... it was sooo clear & very surreal. Especially looking down on birds flying!

Now contrary to the appearance from the photos, this will show you just how busy the mountain was. I took a photo of Gary & the kids on the summit at a QUIET time

1085 meters - we were suprised at how busy it was...

Id have to say it comes second only to chilbirth (for me) in terms of physical effort to get the job done, and how much it blooming well hurt. OMG!!! My legs & hips were SCREAMING! And I think like childbirth I`ll have to wait till Ive forgotten how much it hurt to want to do it again :o)

The rest of the week has been spent swimming & catching up with family... its been nice - and the sun is still shining! Lovely!

Kids go back to school next week, cant believe how quick the 6 week holidays alway go by! Christmas before we know it...

Be well

xx

A Tale of Treasure... Allen style

OK, this post is going to be told by images more than words... the photos speak louder than words anyway :o) A tale of adventure from our holiday in Cornwall, it happened a week or so ago...

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One lovely sunny day, the Allen family and their 2 dogs went rockpooling; the tide was waaaay out so there were many more rockpools to explore than usual. A very enjoyable morning was spent mooching around, finding little treasures - shells, bits of driftwood, buoys, fishing weights. Moma Allen took lots and lots of photos for inspiration, peering into rock pools trying to capture the colours and textures of rock, sea creatures & sea weed. A large rusting anchor needed several photos to capture its beautiful colours.

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As they got to the furthest point, they discovered a sheltered place with high rocks around 3 sides... and lying in the middle...

Was a huge, very interesting, and obviously very old piece of driftwood, lying in a murky puddle.

Daddy Allen is a carpenter by trade, and loves wood. This big old piece of oak got his imagination going straight away... where did it come from? How old is it? HOW long has it been in the water to be so shaped by the tides?

How am I going to take this home? He was figuring out just how to get this huge (6 1/2ft) and very heavy soaking wet piece of oak up the cliffs and a mile or more in either direction before we could collect with the car.

Ever resourceful - the dog leads came in useful. The dogs thought he had gone mad & mistaken a log for one of them :o)

Once at the top it took Matthew & me at the front with a dog lead each, and Gary at the back. Rachael was overseeing the operation and carrying dog water bottles etc. What a funny sight we must of been! Luckily about 1/4 of a mile up the coastal path, we took a chance and headed up a tiny walkway toward some beautiful houses - my reasoning being they were sure to have road access. This was very narrow so Gary shouldered the log by himself.. fortunetely it wasnt too far till we reached a rough road. Gary and Matthew jogged back to collect the car.

It had 4 days to dry out sitting raised on slate outside our tent (looked like we had built a bench :o) Before it was time to come home...

Dont worry, it wasnt really as low on the arches as the picture suggests - it was very uneven ground here & the back tyre was at the highest point.

First day back home...

Sculpted by the gentle hand of Mother Nature - 'the Needle'

Gary set our new piece of garden art in place, the bottom 18" are buried.. its very steady. The corner with the picnic bench has been a bit of a dead area until now, characterless & unused. Its going to be our coastal corner now :o) Ive strung the buoys on fishermans rope and hung them on the fence. There is going to be a shingle area around the Needle, with boulders, sea pinks and Livingstone daisies (they`re the closest I know to pink sea daisies). Just hope they can survive there - its quite shaded most of the time being right by the woods.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun... and we do love driftwood - this really was treasure to us (all 4 of us)

xx

There and back again...

Hi folks :o)

Hope you have all had a good couple of weeks! Ours have been spent exploring new places and enjoying lots of precious family time. I LOVE our family holidays - we have a couple of weeks in the summer and a week at Christmas that are just the 4 of us (and the dogs of course) I do my best to soak up the warmth & serenity and store it to keep me going through the rest of the year when outside influences do their best to disturb my equilibrium! With the children getting older I know that these times are precious... pretty soon they are not going to want to spend a week or 2 just with mom & dad...

We have been camping in Cornwall - yes, again; we love it there. Although next summer Im determined to visit Scotland! The weather was rather mixed... we had some lovely days, a cold day, a rainy day and a windy day - but every evening was beautiful strangely enough.

We spent the 'rainy' day walking up and over Pentire Head and along the coastal path to the Seven Sisters rock formation. On the walk up the headland the rain was coming horizontally at us - we were soaked through! But by the time we got to the top it had stopped... and there looking totally chilled out were these sheep - arent they lovely?!

We didnt want to go to close & disturb them so bypassed the bench, much Rachaels dismay. The day was warm and rather windy so luckily we dried out quickly :o) The cliffs where we walked are where the poet Laurence Binyon wrote 'For the Fallen'... very moving. Im sure you are all familiar with it.

Along the way we crossed the Rumps - an saw evidence of iron age fortifications. They are mound and ditch earthworks... I didnt manage to get a very good photo of them to be honest, you can just make out the lines going across the middleground. Matthew & Jess are just in this photo. Must get a better shot next time! We have wanted to explore here for years but up till now there has always been something thats stopped us; weather, health, unable to drag ourselves away from the surf :o) etc.

This is the furthest point we got to, as you can see a sea mist blew in and got thick fast. It was very rugged and beautiful... possibly due to the weather that day it was SO quiet, there was nobody else about, just the sound of wind, waves & gulls - wonderfull.

We also explored Trebarwith Strand at low tide... when the tide is high there is no beach (and it comes in pretty fast!), but when its out its huge - and fierce, rugged and beautiful. Trebarwith is a few miles south of Tintagel.

We had wildlife treats too; we saw many Merlins and Kestrels and birds that I really dont know what they were, but they were lovely. And walking south along the coastal path from Tintagel, we were the only people about, we were saw a wild deer about 30 feet from us. He bounded up the path and away before I could take a photo unfortunately.

We investigated many rock pools and coves (kids and dogs swimming in many :o) This activity led to one of our biggest adventures! We found treasure! Well, treasure as far as the Allen family were concerned anyway :o) and on that tantalising note Im going to leave you for today... I think this post is plenty long enough lol. Will post soon about our treasure

xxx

Jacobs Fleece Felted Rug

OK, here goes...

I planned to felt one of the lovely fleeces from the farm into a sheepskin type felted rug... Now Ive never felted anything this big before... or felted with raw fleece (straight off the sheep, no cleaning). I was very lucky to have excellent advice from Nicola Brown - Clasheen, and Katherine Huggett from Working with Fibre group on Flickr, thanks ladies :o) it was very much appreciated.

My first job was to get some strong bubblewrap that was big enough for the job. The local electrical store came up trumps with 2 HUGE sheets of big bubble-super strong stuff, they were about 10ft long x 5 ft wide.

I chose a beautifully marked Jacobs fleece, with lots of dark bitter chocolate brown & creamy white patches. After picking as much veggie matter & muck out as I could I laid it out tips down (so the bit that had been closest to the sheep was uppermost. Just look at how dark that brown is...

Nicola felted a rug from a Jacobs last year, and I love the way the background felt (in contrasting colour) extended past the fleece and framed it. I decided to do this with red Icelandic wool batts from Alafoss - 750grams worth! I seperated the batts into thin layers and layed out 3 perpendicular layers over the whole fleece & extending past the edges.

Next I layed some purple cotton nuno gauze from Wingham on-top and covered the edges with the last of my batts.

It measured just under 9ft long x 5ft wide at this point and was very thick!

I watered it with very hot water with lots of washing up liquid in, using a watering can with a sprinkler rose on it. It took about 3 gallons to wet it, so good job I was working in the garden! Once rolled it was like a roll of carpet, it was so fat!

Unfortunately it was at this point that I deviated from the good advice... I didnt really have a suitable table to roll it on. The best I could manage was our old picnic bench, which was ok... but being as it was as long as the table I couldnt roll from the short end... which meant the benches were in my way. I couldnt stand close enough to roll easily, so one knee went on the bench and basically I spent 4 hours of rolling - every roll was like an aerobic lunge - hence the stiff muscles! Half way through the rolling I rubbed the fabric side, with my hands in plastic bags, with extra soap just to make sure the fibres had penetrated through the fabric properly.

Id planned to getpast the messy stage and get the kids involved as a family project... it didnt happen - this was really messy. Rachael played mom for the day, she made lunch & drinks bless her :o)

After every 100 rolls I unwrapped it, straightened it out, sprinkled more hot soapy water and rolled in a different direction. Once everything was holiding together well I worked it with the fleece side up for a couple hundred rolls. Then I did something I rarely do... I surrendered it to the washing machine. I drained it, then it went through 2 rinses & 3 wool washes (no extra soap). After every cycle I took it out and checked it carefully. When I was happy it had felted enough and was clean & soap free I put it through a short spin cycle and draped it over a clothes horse to dry.

After a day and 2 nights it was dry. I spent a couple of hours today crawling around on it finding and removing burrs and twigs that had escaped my notice. Now it is finished... an Im very happy with it :o) Its worth the aching joint & stiff muscles... and Im sure I will felt more of these. Im actually planning to do a couple of half sized ones with purple accents.

Just finished picking it over... thought I should test it out for comfort :o)

I used white throwsters waste silk fibre around the edge of the fleece (placed before the batts went down) and in some of the gaps, you can see it here around the outside.

The rug now measures approx 7 1/2ft x 4ft, approximate because of the wavy edges.

What else has been going on this week...? Well the kids attended their golf summer school... at Garys Golf Club. Rachael won a little trophy for the biggest hit from a girl that the pro has taught so far this year - she is very pleased with herself & big bro is chuffed with her too :o) Unfortunately she managed to jar her hand with all the hard hits - its in a sling on doctors orders today. They dont go again for another 2 weeks now so it should be better by then.

We are going camping on Saturday... I really should start thinking about what to take. I probably wont blog again before we go, so until then be well folks and have a good couple of weeks :o)

xxx

Long time no speak...

My last post was pretty much all about Rachaels felted gifts for her teachers - I can happily report that they were thrilled to bits with them :o)

Ive been asked to go into school and do a felting workshop in September. While talking with the teacher I mentioned International Felt Day & the slice of the colour wheel theme - Year 6 are doing `under the sea` & `outerspace` for autumn projects, so I think it`ll be pretty easy to fit in with that in blue, green & yellow...should be fun!

We have had a wonderfully chilled out first week of the summer holidays :o) Weather could of been better - but still a very nice week... we were busy doing nothing. We did potter around in the garden quite a bit and I thought Id share this years bean structure with you (you lucky things). Last year we had what looked like a Dalek (off Dr.Who) this year we have...

An archway of beans
They are about 10feet apart, but meet in the middle

And my favourite flowers are in full bloom...

Helenium - said to of sprung up where the tears of Helen of Troy fell to the ground.

I had an out-of-the-blue phone call, from a farmers wife of my aquaintanc,e a couple of weeks back. They have a freerange & I think organic farm about 20 miles away - in a stunningly beautiful valley in Worcestershire. They`re holding an open day on the farm on 25th September, with tractor rides to visit the animals (rare & heritage breeds), egg collecting and things like that... all to raise money for their local church, and for Help for Heros charity. They asked me to go along and do some spinning... as you all know Im primarily a felter & the urge to felt is STRONG. My good friend Clare has saved the day, she is coming with me and shall be spinning & I shall be felting... a simple little workshop using fleece from the farm sheep. I feel honored to of been asked along, and Im really looking forward to spending a day in beautiful surroundings, playing with wooly goodness and chatting - and visiting all of the animals of course.

I collected the fleeces just before the kids broke up... spent a nice couple of hours rooting through wool sacks (aided by 2 friendly bearded collies) we were in an open sided barn in glorious sunshine with swallows flying in and around - it was lovely. I have 4 jacobs fleeces - all are beautifully marked. I decided to felt one of them into a sheep friendly sheepskin type rug to raffle off & hopefully raise more money for Help for Heros.

Knowing this would be a big job & hard work was one thing ... I did it yesterday and OMG I am aching SO much... I cant begin to tell you. Its drying out now - and I am happy :o) I still have a couple of hours work left, and I shall be posting more very soon - I even remembered to take pictures as I made it!!! Good going for me - I usually think of that just as I finish lol.

Oh & I got my Peacefelt swap partners today! Another very exciting project to be involved in :o) Just got to figure out what to make now...

Hope you are all having a good week
xxx

p.s. Im having trouble with the spacings on blogger again... sorry if it looks iggledy-piggledy; Im fed up of trying to get it even & leaving it as it is x

My mini felter

My daughter, Rachael, is 11 & tomorow will be finishing Primary School. Over the last week or so she has thought about the teachers she wants to give a special gift to. She`s planned carefully and worked hard... and has created 3 really lovely gifts. She is getting to be a very good little felter!

You saw the butterfly that she felted for her current class teacher a couple of posts ago. Next we felted side by side creating a felted flower bracelet - I made one & Rachael copied me step by step... I enjoyed it at least as much as she did!

This is for the teacher that she had in both year 3 & year 5, and who gave her one-to-one booster sessions last year. She is a lovely young teacher... I can really see her wearing this.

And this is for the Headmaster, who is also leaving the school tomorow (a real shame). A mat to go on his new desk for his cup of tea and plate of biscuits :o) Rachael served on the school council for a couple of years and meetings in the headmasters office usually involved a plate of cookies :o)

In half an hour I am off to the leavers assembly & I just know that Im going to blub all the way through! Feeling veeery emotional at the moment. This is my baby... and at the moment she is still a very young 11...very little girly. I have a feeling she will grow up quickly when she goes to High School... I know my son did and he was always a little man anyway.

OK off to check the camera batteries & find some tissues

xxx

B`day pressie pics

I can show you what I made now! Moms birthday has been and gone, she has her pressie... think she likes it (hope she does)...

What with both of the kids ill with that fluish virus last week (please dont let me come down with it!!!) and working at the weekend, plus this week is the last week of term & my little one is finishing Primary School - so there are leavers assemblys & plays and all sorts to attend AND this is my last few days of felting & working at home while the kids are at school - theres just no spare time. OK breath...

So, here it is...

Icelandic wool & merino in lovely woodland greens...

Lots of texture...with silk caps, wool & alpaca yarns, fabric scraps, glass beads, even bit of ostritch feather

Thats not all... this little lantern has a secret...

Dwelling deep inside this woodland cavern...

Is a pewter earthmother.

Unnoticed until the LED tealight is turned on, then she glows.

Be well folks
xx