I Can Sing A Rainbow!

I needed several different colours for a felt making workshop with children at a local school; with not much time for dyeing, I took a gamble on a technique against the rule that says tops must be soaked before putting into the dye and I made up the dye-baths (with plenty of water) and entered the dry tops.
These tops were a carded Corriedale, and very open, which probably helped a lot, but I was thrilled to find the colours were very even after cooling in the dye and rinsing and drying.




The workshop is on making pictures by felting shapes cut from pre-felts onto a background, these pieces will be felted on to a large background of blue (for water) and yellow (for sand) to give a wall-hanging on a sea theme.




The children are grade three and fours, and we are very impressed with the care and inspiration they have shown, and their enthusiasm. These are some of their pieces. Watch this space for the final wall hanging in about 2 weeks.







And, yes, I did use my new studio space to make the pre-felts, even without the end wall – though there were a few exclamations of mild annoyance when the gentle breezes arose and disturbed my carefully laid out wool! Some had to have the cover-cloth laid on as the fibres were laid out. But it was bliss to have plenty of room to slash around in and no carpet to worry about.

Making progress towards a studio.

Several years ago, it seems, I annexed the garage as studio space for my weaving, spinning, and allied activities, as they were expanding into all the living areas of the house.

We had the floor concreted and bought some second-hand windows to install – first priority being to block where the car-entry door had been.

This weekend the window went in, a superb effort by my loving not-a-builder husband. He even found some almost matching cladding, to fill in the gaps till we can reclad the whole shed.

We extended the concrete on one end, to increase the space, and this end still needs to be walled in, but the window is a very definite step forward.

I have a workshop on felting booked for next week, so next project is to dye the 2 kilos of wool needed for that - five grades at local primary school making a wall hanging each, plus their take-home piece.

More about that later.