Weekend Scraps

I headed back to work this week, and it feels like I almost got more done than I did on my week off. (Probably inaccurate, but it FELT that way...lol)

Our business started back in 1999ish, when Mom and I started making mice cat toys from our scrap yarn. That has really shaped who I am as a knitter, as I always try to utilize as much of the yarn as possible. It's also one of the reasons why I struggle so hard with pompoms - which seem to waste a ton of yarn to make one good pom. In the last few years I have started crocheting cat toys, which allows me to use even non-felting yarn scraps.

Anyway - all this is to set up the fact that I have been thinking about scrap knitting a lot this week. I even made a post on Twitter about it, how sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes the end product turns out even better than I anticipated. Over the last two years I've been making a lot of scarves from Scarfie yarn by Lion Brand, which is a non-felting, easy care yarn. I've been keeping all the little scraps, (and sometimes the big scraps!) left over from those projects in a bag, and this week I pulled out that bag and put together a fringed scarf and a hat.

The hat came out better than I imagined it would, although it is a bit large. The scarf was the fun bit, even if the yarn didn't cooperate the way I wanted it to. (I was doing single rows of thicker yarn throughout, and one of the strands ran out before I got to the end of the row. It turned out ok, but not what I had envisioned.) Usually I leave the fringe long and messy, but this time I wanted a cleaner look, so I YouTube'd some techniques for twisting fringe. I love how it came out :)

I also got some flowers planted this weekend, and am headed out again today with Matt to work in the greenhouse building secondary shelves so there is more room for the baby plants.

Hope you all have a great week and we'll see you next time!

How to Wet Felt

This is by no means a comprehensive tutorial on wet felting, it is simply a chronicle of my wet/needle felting project thus far! (Read more about this in an earlier blog post: Outside My Comfort Zone) Honestly, I am still working out the design details. They are coming together...but very slowly. Actually, I'm better at the details than the big picture, so some details are coming together better than the overall design!

First I started with a very dirty fleece, which I then washed. I hand carded a bit of the wool, but left most of it in locks as I only have a hand carder - and this was a big fleece!!

Then, with the help of a fellow fiber enthusiast, I laid out the locks in a grid pattern. The bottom layer faces one direction, with the second layer perpendicular to the first, and so on. Time constraints meant we only put down three layers plus a little extra.

Then came the fun part (and my exercise for the day!!) Hot, soapy water is smished into the wool, deep down in so the wool is soaked through. Then, using some elbow grease, the whole piece was hand rubbed to start the felting process, covered with a clothlike shower curtain, and rubbed some more. She had a nifty little tool that you could use to really dig into the fiber! Then, it is rolled up, we used a pool noodle and some pool grade type of bubble wrap, secured with some rubber bands, and rolled up and down a driveway for a solid 10-15 minutes. Halfway through, the piece was flipped, rubbed and wet down a bit more before heading back out to the driveway.

The really scary part came in the rinse down - she rinsed it, then slammed it hard against the ground several times, just to make sure the felt would hold. It held, and the bubble imprints came out too!! Then a final rinse, a spin cycle to dry, and I now have a piece of felt I can hang on a wall, and needle felt. Part two will follow within the month!!