Got A New Book

Since I have been playing with fleece I was browsing books on line for ideas like you do and found this fab book

 The author Moly Mackay is so talented

 She takes you step by step through many projects with lots of photos

 The felt work is done with wet felting needle felting stitching and embellishing

there is still life and landscapes and lots of ideas of what to use your felted art for.

Now I just to need find some time to have a go :-)

Christmas Mice

Yes I know its only July but I really need to get some Christmas items made ready for the craft fairs,

today I made a start with some Candy Cane Mice

 They were done on my embroidery machine and made in felt

They can be hung on the tree by there candy cane tails

I think they look rather cute.

I have several other designs for candy canes, I hope this week to get a collection of them made, then I can take a small tree along with me to the craft fair and decorate it with candy cane holders.

Spinning A Yarn

I have so wanted to make my own yarns, the reason for the Alpacas was for there fleece

This week I finally had time to sit down at my spinning wheel and teach myself to spin armed with a couple of books and some Jacob Roving's I had got to practise with off I went, I haven't sat at my wheel for over two years and last time it was my first practise and spend any hours turning the air blue as I fought with the roving's, it was all put away until now

 

 The above picture shows what I was managing to do, I was so impressed with what I was doing

I spun up some white as well and plied the together

Then it was taken off into a skein 

Yeah I had produced a yarn it may have been of varying thickness but it was still yarn

next up was a bag of this I had in my stash I don't know what it is but I loved the colours

this time I weighed it and split it in half and off I went again

with my wheel spinning away I soon had two bobbins of a fairly decent thickness

they were plied together and now are in a skein waiting to be washed to set the twist.

I felt confident enough to tackle some of the Alpaca fleece, I grabbed a bag of Miss Daisy fleece 

I had a go without carding first, it was coming up fine but there was a few knotty bits

 

I then carded some of the fleece

its so light and airy

 I am now spinning it up

Its coming on lovely 

I am using my Ashford Kiwi 2 wheel 

I have been getting a lot of help and inspiration from this group

Spinners Support Group

There is a good mix of experienced and beginners some spinning on a wheel some with a drop spindle lots of laughs too, so if you spin or fancy spinning or just have an interest in yarn pop along