Some felt experiments

Yesterday I spent the afternoon felting with yarns that I bought recently in Scotland (see my previous post). To bind the threads with each other, I used wool top. I first started with laying out vertical treads, added the wool top, then added the horizontal threads to make a grid pattern.
In my first experiment I also added some wool top above this last layer. But this piece did not turn out so well. I wanted a lacelike effect. So I tried again, using 3 layers: yarns, wool top and another layer of yarns. The wooltop was placed with open spaces so that I could have holes in the felt. This second picture - in white- is the result. I really liked it but felt that I needed to get rid of the praphic grid pattern.

So the red version (first picture) was next: just spiling out the yarn over the table, then adding the wool top and of course, adding an extra layer of yarn in loose loops.
This is the piece that I love best. This yarn also felted better with the wool top than the previous one.
I could do some handstitching on the white felt to bind the yarn better with the rest of the felt, but feel that it might ruin the loose and rough look of the feel.
Wishing for an embellisher right now.... Sigh...
Also tried some other things, like felting to organza. It did work, but the piece did not look good enough to post here but is a great piece to do some other techniques on.
Anyway, I enjoyed these experiments even though I am a bit limited in my movements - rolling the felt - because of some stitches in my shoulder (because of minor surgery). Looking forward to removal of these stitches and being able to move my arm freely again!

Yarns for felting

On our last one week holiday (they are always way too short), we discovered this little yarnshop called Woolfish near the nature reserve of St. Abbs Head (South Scotland, east coast).
One corner is filled with beautiful yarns in glorious colours.
I had decided that I would not buy more yarn - since I still have plenty of them - but these yarns were very different, I simply could not resist...


I ended up buying different balls of yarns for felting and thought that I really resisted the urge to buy new yarns for a complete garment.
But back in the car and droving off, I realised that I would never be able to buy these luxuriously yarns in the Netherlands.


So the next day, when the car was packed and we were ready to go to the ferry back to Holland, we stopped again and bought dark blue space dyed yarn for a sweater... So this autumn I do not have to get bored, but get knitting again - and probably by hand as well.

One of the skeins is already partly used in a piece of weaving that I did on a kids loom. I do own a regular loom, but it is in hiding on my mothers attic for more than 11 years now. I do not have enough space here in our house and weaving takes up so much time, especially the part of preparation. Also, once the threads are all tied up, you can't change your mind. And changing my mind is something I always like to do!
Anyway, the kids loom did work well enough and it is going to be felted anyway.
Another ball of yarn has been knitted up, it not only contains wool, but mohair as well. Am very curious how well that will turn out.

The third picture is of another ball of yarn, from Japan. As you can see, the colours are quite contrasting and I am looking forward to felt it. Still have to make up my mind whether I want to knit it up, or cut up threads and felt these together with carded wool.

Here is the website of the shop:
www.woolfish.co.uk

And a blog as well:
http://woolfisher.blogspot.com/