Just a quick post this evening as the hours seem to have slipped away and it is now time for bed!  The last of the  trees were planted this morning and I was lucky enough to plant the final 8, far from the amount I had originally intended but time was not on my side.

This afternoon I decided it was time to try incorporating some fabulous hand dyed silk velvet into a scarf, this was part of the stash that I bought at the recent Knit and Stitch Show in Dublin.  I also wanted to try some of the hand dyed silk ribbons that I brought home from the States, both the fabrics were in gorgeous shades of hot orange through to burgundy.  I laid out a short scarf in some of my short fibred merino and overlaid with the velvet and silk strips.  Lizzie Houghton (in Felting Fashion) says to trap the velvet with some wool fibres and  luckily I did.  As I progressed through the felting process I actually thought that the velvet had felted into the wool, not the case as it turned out.  The silk ribbon also didn’t incorporate into the wool as well as I expected but overall the effect is quite rich.  A couple of seed beads in appropriate spots might just add to the opulent  feeling and the richly textured end result is worth trying out a couple more times as the velvet does add another dimension to the felt.