Spinning for leisure, felting for pleasure

This orange flower just had to be made, celebrating the first warm and sunny spring days!

I added a couple of beads and French knots for embellishment and a safety pin on the back - a brooch for a spring jacket or as a closure for a shawl or a wrap. It's a small present for a friend of mine.



I've been spinning a little too - just for the fun of it, no special project in mind. 'Spinning is good for the soul' - Anke at WolleNaturFarben often reminds me of that in her blog postings - and yes, spinning is like meditating, it soothens your mind and calms your thoughts - and at the same time, your hands produce a lovely yarn out of the soft wool on your lap.

I still had a roving left of the New Zealand wool I dyed myself two summers ago - not a very spectacular one, but I did like the red dots in between:



It's funny, how serendipity often decides how a yarn will turn out - sometimes a most beautiful roving turns out to become a quite regular yarn, sometimes it's just the other way round ...

You make your decisions about the wool, the blending, to card or not to card, about the thickness and the whorl when spinning, how and with which material to ply - and still there is a randomness which keeps surprising you until the end.

Even if I have been spinning enthusiastically for a couple of years and know that I can control the handling a lot more now than in the beginning, I still feel there's a lot left to be learned. I remain a seeker and beginner in my experiments.

It seems every new yarn teaches me something I didn't observe before - in this case, it was the colour of the plying. When plying with a thin thread, I usually try 'hiding' it by choosing the dominant colour of the roving - this time, I took a shiny blue silk thread instead and a dark red woolen one, referring to the red spots on the wool -



and in my opinion, this was exactly what made this yarn arise. (Meeting the colours with the camera would need improved skills though, I'm afraid - the first photo above, with the felt flower in the front, shows the 'glow' better ...)

(German summary: Eine gefilzte Blumenbrosche zum Einläuten des Frühlings - und einige Gedanken darüber, wie jedes handgesponnene Garn mir neue Erkenntnisse und Aha-Erlebnisse bringt - diesmal war es die farbliche Akzentuierung beim Verzwirnen.)

Felted pencil holders/Filz-Stifte

Oh dear, it's been a fortnight since I posted last, I'm sorry for that ...

The heat of the summer has struck us completely now - 30-35°C in the shadow, and it's often too hot to do anything ... The kids have two more weeks to go before they're off on summer holidays, and we're all looking forward to get a leave ...!

It's late in the evening, and I've just finished preserving ten small jars of strawberry jam with elderberry flowers - if you're lucky still to have some fresh elderberry flowers in your garden when the strawberries are ripening, you really should try this: just boil the strawberries as usual, but put a small branch of elderberry flowers into the jar before filling it up with the hot jam - that's all! The combination is wonderful - and no extra effort at all - and I'm sure you won't regret this little experiment!

Two weeks ago, my daughter Emily and I spent an afternoon felting some pencil holders, just for fun - you just wrap a pencil tightly with some wool roving, felt it with warm soap water, rinse it and form the upper tail as you please, then let it dry:



When completely dry, I embroidered a couple of them with the handdyed thread and some beads:



Well, I've managed to finish the first silk/wool shoulder scarf as well, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out:



As you can see from the detailed picture, I felted a shawl pin in the matching colours to go with it:



Following an idea of Sara, I used a Chinese chopstick for the pin and wet felted around the top in a similar way as with the pencils. The shawl and the pin were a birthday present for a very dear friend of mine.

(German version: Bei uns ist es im Moment so heiß, daß man fast gar nichts machen kann! Trotzdem habe ich heute das Spezialrezept meiner Mutter, für Erdbeermarmelade mit Holunderblüten, machen müssen: Man kocht die Erdbeeren wie üblich, nur daß man noch ein Blütenzweigerl ins Glas gibt, bevor man die heiße Marmelade hineinfüllt! Sehr einfach und sehr empfehlenswert - wenn man das Glück hat, noch frische Blüten im Garten zu haben!

Mit meiner Tochter habe ich noch ein paar Stifte mit Filzwolle ummantelt und naßgefilzt, dann bestickt - ja, und das Woll-/Seidenschultertuch ist auch fertig und hat schon eine neue Besitzerin gefunden!)

When I wish upon a star ...

This is a felted star I did some time ago - and I'm making some more now, for Christmas. It's wet felted with natural white roving over a metal wire, then embellished with some glass beads.

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Yesterday was 'kind of Xmas to me - I received a wonderful parcel from Paula, filled with the most gorgeous small scale printed cotton and silk fabrics, colourful embroidery threads and glass beads ... and even one of Paula's fantastic 'skitches'!



I was so happy and inspired - and today I rushed to the post office with my mail swap for her!

I must admit I just love getting mail - especially this kind of surprise parcels! And I think it's a lovely idea to swap goodies from your stash with someone who appreciates similar things ... making yourself and somebody else double happy, both enjoying the gathering and packing as well as the receiving and exploring of the gift - well, if this isn't Xmas!

And it's sensible recycling and resource consciousness par excellence, isn't it? (And it keeps the post men busy!) I love it! Anyone else out there wanting to swap with me?

Yggdrasil and a red miniquilt

This is a detail on quite a large project, which I am working on right now. It's called "Yggdrasil", which is the tree of the world in the Nordic mythology. At the moment it's as long as 230 x 35 cm, but I expect it to shrink a bit during the final wet felting procedure. It can be used as a wallhanging or as a tablerunner for a long table (like mine!). It consists of six pre-felted segments on which I've punched the dark leaves and which I'm now embellishing with threads of hand-dyed wool.

Below you can see the red miniquilt, which I'm also working on - this piece is somewhat easier to take along, as it only measures about 28x28cm ... I found it among my fabrics, just half-way finished - had forgotten about it - and decided to go on with it now. The technique even fits in a bit on the Whatiffing- and quilting-by-going theme - and the different shades of red remind me of Christmas, especially combined with the green squares at the corners!