My wonderful time spent with Sharon, Emma, Mark and Chris in Loomis has finally come to an end.  The Tin Thimble is truly a family run business and everyone who passed through the gates during my visit was friendly, fun and fired up with fibre and fabric fever.  Sharon and I stayed felting until almost 12pm each evening, when you are with someone like minded it is definitely hard to take a break and we both wanted to spend as much time sharing our experiences and having fun while felting together!  I REALLY enjoyed both the complex felt bag and the nuno mosaic workshops, most of the participants actually attended the two courses so by the end of Monday night we were really like one big happy family, all be it a rather tired but happy family!!!  Here is a picture demonstrating how amazing the nuno mosaic scarves turned out, Susan had to fly and catch a plane but hopefully I will have a picture of her gorgeous piece as soon as she gets home and has time to photo it.

MArni, me, Sharon, Jenine and Brenda showing off their beautiful nuno mosaic scarves!

You can also see some of the complex bags although not all were totally finished at the end of the workshop; there is a LOT of work involved in designing and felting a project such as this and Sharon’s is the only fully felted one in this picture, it is GORGEOUS!

Onwards to San Fransisco, amazingly gleaming in the sun when I arrived and the warmest I have ever experienced here to date.  I really need to stop talking for a day or two (my voice is on the blink!) and fully prepare for an action packed weekend at Knit One One in Berkeley and Urban Fauna Studio in the Mission District, SF.  We kick off the weekend with an evening felt jewellery class in Knit One One, if you are thinking of participating please SIGN UP NOW because we need another two people to make the night work and tomorrow is obviously the deadline for sign ups!

World Felt Day will be brilliant, my first return workshop will be taking place in Urban Fauna and I am so excited to be sharing loads of interesting techniques for creating unusual felt accessories, CLICK HERE if you would like to join us.  On Sunday we have another workshop at Urban Fauna, this time felted vessels and the place to SIGN UP IS HERE!

Off to bed now (aka having a glass of wine with Jamie and Blas before I head off!) so I leave you with some more fabulous photos from the wonderful workshops at Tin Thimble, another update tomorrow.  They may be all over the shop (Irish for all over the page!) but I know you’ll forgive me since the felt is definitely drool worthy!!!

Brenda's silk laid out and ready to cover with two VERY light layers of merino

Modelling the completed nuno mosaic scarf!

Susan including beautiful hand dyed silk in her lay out

Patti and Sharon concentrating on laying out their silk

Jenine throws a pose!

Marni with her amazing first piece of nuno felt!

Fabulous texture from different weights of silk and a gorgeous vintage scarf

The beautiful Sharon from The Tin Thimble with her really amazing wrap

Patti added a romantic ruffle to the edge of her wrap