This evening I finished felting and fulling the rug I made at Mehmet Girgic’s workshop last week.  With all the excitement and action of organising the 2 workshops I didn’t get my rug worked and shrunk as much as I would have liked during the course.  Today I was at Woodbrook with Giles and Alexandra sorting out a couple of things and I was able to collect my rug and finish it here this evening.  First I gave it a quick wash in my washing machine to get it damp and ready to roll, then I started rolling and rubbing to continue the fulling process.  It was actually pretty good fun as I was able to feel the fibres contracting and thickening to quite a degree and I really wanted to achieve a good quality finish.  After about 30 minutes of action I threw it in the machine again for another cycle and then I worked it by hand again for about another 40 minutes.  One thing that has been very interesting is that the rug bases we used in Ireland are prepared from a different wool than those we worked with at the course I attended with Mehmet in Germany.  They definitely don’t felt down into such a thick rug unless you REALLY work and roll them for about 8 hours and it was also interesting seeing the shrinkage difference in the areas where I had laid wool roving and wool tops, morning I am going to take some pictures of the finished rug and you will see exactly what I mean.  The sky area where I lightly laid the Amerian merino roving  felted more that the mountainous landscape where I used some of the New Zealand batts giving a narrower top edge than bottom.  Even though I have paitently worked the bottom edge quite a bit more than the top the difference is still visable but since the rug is a naive scene in some ways this adds to the charm!  I also love the fact that the rugs are totally machine washable when felted, an amazing selling point if doing commissions for rugs or wallhangings.