All the colours of the rainbow

Knitting and Stitching was fantastic, needless to say I spent rather a lot of money, and came home with a wonderful bag of goodies to keep me going for a while. These included some giant knitting needles so I can knit myself a giant scarf (I love big needles because it requires less knitting), some cute cotton tapes, 2 pieces of suede and this book on Natural Dyeing. My daughter picked this book and is eager to get creating, I had to go sock shopping on Sunday!

I had a few brooches on the International Feltmakers stall, and it seems these little birdies are very popular, I managed to make 18 and sold the lot. Look, they come in every colour of the rainbow. I'm hoping to get some more made over the next few days so I can list them in the shop.

Studio

Ok, even my Mum has noticed that it's been a long time since the blog was updated, so here's the latest news. During October we had this built at the bottom of our garden.....


my very own felting studio. I have wanted this for so long, and it's absolutely fantastic. I was waiting until it was completely finished before I showed you photos but it's taking me rather a long time to get all my stuff organized, so here are some 'before' snaps and I'll show you some more when it's completed (which realistically will be after Christmas now).


At the moment I'm busy making brooches to display on the International Feltmakers Association stand at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show, if anyone's going on Saturday, I'll be helping out on the stand during the morning. I'm also going there for the day on Friday with my Mum and Auntie, we've been going together every year since I was a student at Leeds and we always have a great day out. I'm already excited and have been saving my pennies, although clearly from the trouble I've been having getting everything to fit in the new studio I DO NOT need any more craft supplies. My daughter, who is 7, has asked to come this year as well, which made me very happy. I'm going to take her round on Saturday afternoon (I think a whole day would be a bit over whelming). I hope she finds it as inspirational as I do, she does love her arts and crafts.

and the winner is...

Number one, picked by DH, please excuse the photograph, it's late and the number was lost with the flash on. Thank you to everyone who commented, and Crafty Cripple, please e-mail me so I can send out your prize.

Monsterous Bags

Thank you for all your lovely comments, I'll be picking the winner sometime tomorrow. As promised here is a post that doesn't involve pictures of flower brooches. I have been working on a few bags this week. The grey monster is a commissioned piece, and I have to say it's one of my favourites, I just love her big, adorable eyes and cute nose. She is made from Gotland and Merino. The girlie pink monster (Shirley) has gone into the etsy shop, look at her sweet wensleydale locks of hair, I'd love curls like that. The last one has been embellished with a flower which is a slightly different design from my brooches ( I have been spending some time trying out different flower shapes). The flower bag has also been listed in my etsy shop. The pink and lilac bag have both been hand dyed with natural dyes, lac for pink and logwood for purple. I bought all my dyes from DT crafts, they come in a powdered form so they're really easy to use. However, I do have plans create a little dyers garden and am starting to research which plant to get.

Giveaway!!

OK, here it is, my little giveaway to celebrate the International Day of Felt. The theme for this day was the segment of the colour wheel yellow through to red. So I've made a little felted flower from merino wool and dyed it yellow using fustic. For your chance to win just leave a comment and I'll draw the winner at random on Friday the 9th of October.


Oh, and I promise not to show any more flowers for a while, they have rather dominated the blog recently.

Why it's been quiet...

I haven't listed anything new in the shops for a while becasue I've been busy with this lot. Forty flower brooches and ten soap stone are now on their way to Italy, phew! I've now got a couple of custom orders I'm working on then I plan to make a whole batch of products for the shops. I have lots of ideas for a coordinated range using natural dyes which I'm very excited about. I'll be showing sneak peeks on here before they are listed so keep a look out.


Did you know today is the International Day of Felt, our region of the IFA has worked on a project for this event which will be displayed at the IFA stand at The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate.

To celebrate this day of felt I'm going to offer a little give away either today (or tomorrow if I don't get the item finished in time), so please call back soon.

Oh, and one last thing. I am debating whether to sell the instructions to make my flower brooches in a PDF format in my etsy shop, would anyone be interested?

Flowers

More flower brooches which have been dyed with natural dyes, they look so yummy together, can't wait to make more.

Dyeing with Nature

The kids have been back at school for nearly two weeks now. Over the holidays I did very little craft wise, so it took me a while to get back into the swing of felting again, but this week has been much more productive than last week. I have been experimenting with my natural dye kit that I bought from DT craft and design at woolfest. I decided it would be easier to felt items first then dye, rather than dye the wool tops. Here are some of my pieces, which are slowly making their way to etsy and folksy. I love the fact that you're never quite sure how they will turn out, it makes the process much more fun.

Dyed with teal (and some left over logwood)

Dyed with logwood

I did some more flowers today using madder, they have a real autumnal feel to them. As soon as they've finished I'll share them with you.

And here's something I've been meaning to blog about for a while. Do you remember this top I made on Charity Musoma Van der Meer's workshop, well I made a similar one for my daughter in lilac. She wore it to her leaver's disco (she's just moved up to Junior school).

Felt Making Workshop - Felted Vessels

I still have some places left on my felted vessels workshop on Saturday the 15th of August. The workshop runs from 10.30 to 3.30 and is held at Calcutt Village Hall, just outside Knaresborough. The cost of the workshop is £30 which includes all materials, you just need to bring a packed lunch. Here are some examples of the type of work produced...

If you are interested please get in touch with me at fibrespace@gmail.com

Camping in the Cairngorms

Hi Folks, I'm still here, just enjoying summer with my family. We've just got back from camping in the Cairngorms National Park for 10 days!! That's our longest ever camping trip. That part of Scotland is beautifully stunning, I took lots of photographs and am planning to create a body of felting work which is more art than function, something I've not really done before. I can't wait to get started on the sketch book, something I rediscovered whilst on my City and Guilds course. I was always very precious about work that went into my sketch books and consequently they never really flowed, but on the course I just went for it and didn't worry to much about the end result, and it turned out keeping a sketch book can be fun. My 7 year old daughter likes to join in to. We sit together at the dining table with all my materials spread out and experiment with colour, techniques and shape. Here are a few of my holiday snaps...

that's our tent in the left hand corner, with spectacular views of cairngorm in the background.

We made it to the coast one day but it was very windy, so I sat sheltering in the sand dunes taking photos whilst M helped the kids build sandcastles.


This is the lake that's on the edge of the campsite.


We did a lot of walking.



and saw lots of different creatures.


but my favourite bit was feeding the reindeer.

Woolfest 2009

Woolfest was fantasic, we were blessed with good weather, which was just as well as we were camping. I met lots of lovely people (so nice to meet others who share your obsession with wool), saw lots of beautiful inspiring things and spent a little money as well. Business wise, it's been my best year so far, I think my concentration on branding has paid off as the stall looked a lot more professional than previous years. Here's a few pictures:

There I am wearing my top / dress that I made on Charity Musoma Van der Meer's workshop the week before. It was a two day workshop organised by the IFA, I really enjoyed it and came away all inspired. I wore my top both days at woolfest and although it was very warm I did not feel uncomfortable in it. It is made from silk chiffon and super fine merino wool (one layer). I've just made a similar one for my daughter that I am going to dye purple, and then I'm going to have a go at making myself a skirt.

Right, I must go and do some work now so I can take a break to watch Andy Murray play at Wimbledon, I'll leave you with a few more pictures from Woolfest.

Tweet, Tweet

Here are some little birds I've been making for woolfest, the first two are perched on a dry stone wall of felted soaps. I still have lots to do, not enough hours in the day!

Banksy

I'd really like to go and see this....

Felting Workshops

I forgot to mention, the new set of felting workshops are up on the website (although some of the photo's need updating - will get DH onto it today). Take a look here.

Sorry, no felt today.....

I'm being a bit pants with the blog again, I'm also behind in the reading of blogs as well, I have over 500 unread entries in google reader!! Ever since taking time off from the computer during the half term holidays I've struggled to get back into it. It could be the good weather we're having, we had a cracker of weekend last week so we took an impromptu camping trip with our new family sized tent. It was fantastic to get away and explore somewhere new, the kids loved it. We're hoping to do it more often, surely we're due a hot summer aren't we?

These photos were taken on the Ingleton waterfall walk, so proud that the kids managed a 4.5 mile walk in hot weather with no complaining!

I received some good news last week, I don't know if I'd mentioned it here, but I was a little bit slow getting my Woolfest application in and missed out on a stall. I was gutted as I really like doing this show. Well, someone has pulled out, so I got a call last week to tell me there's a stall going if I want it! I'm really excited, but I'm working like mad to get enough stock ready, only 3 weeks to go!. Also, all the B&B's are booked up, so I'm camping with my Auntie (who doesn't camp), fingers crossed for good weather.

Other non felting news, here's my cat, after surgery to rectify an ingrowing eyelid and remove pre cancerous lumps from both ears! She's making a good recovery, but now looks a little bit like a bear! For those of you with white haired cats, use sun block if you want to avoid expensive vet bills!
I'll be back next week with some pictures of things I'm making for woolfest, I have been doing a lot of dyeing!

City and Guilds Felting Exhibition

Sorry it's taken over a week to post the photographs of the exhibition, I've had a few custom orders :)

So here we go, this is my stuff, sorry about the quality of the photographs, I was rushing to take them before the external verifier arrived. I've also uploaded them small as there are so many (I'll put my work on flickr in a moment).

And here is a snippet of the excellent work produced by the rest of the students....

Can't wait to get going with part 3.