Felting crazy

Had a great day today on the felting front.  First thing this morning I called over to Carmen and thankfully she was a little better although not fully recovered from her virus or whatever.  As a result we had a spot of breakfast and I was home and ready for action by about 10am.  The first thing that I got stuck into was shaving the rug I made at the Mehmet Girgic workshop and then the felted lariat with the spirally bits that I mentioned in my post yesterday.  I made some more long cords, very thin and then worked further on all the cords to make sure that they were fully compacted before winding them around the metal knitting needles and putting them in the oven of the Rayburn (oil fired range).  A great lunch later I recieved a call from a friend and I decided to go in to Borris for a quick coffee with them and to visit the bank.  About an hour later I suddenly realised that the spirals were still in the oven, boy was I lucky that they were not burnt to cinders!!  Anyway, I finished that lariat, made two more nuno felt neck pieces and then assembled another lariat, this time two thickish cords with flowers on either end.  Tomorrow morning I am going to photograph all the work and then I need to go to Kilkenny and meet with Ann Mulrooney, the curator of Breaking Out.

Advertisement

Felted coils

Carmen and I had intended to meet up at mine this morning and settle in to a productive mornings felting.  Unfortunately poor Carmen has picked up some kind of bug or virus and was totally unable to make our session so I called over to her house and dropped back again later to check that she was OK.  As a result I didn’t get as much time as expected to work on my last couple of ideas for ‘Breaking Out’ but I did work on some felted components that I will utilise tomorrow at a marathon felting day!  I am working on a neckpiece which will feature felted coils, I am making the coils by wrapping felt cords around metal knitting needles while wet and then baking them in my Rayburn until the wool is dry and the curls are fixed.  They seem to be working.  My intention is to make a lariat or choker with both ends finishing in long curly pieces of felt, sounds strange and maybe it will be!  Update promised tomorrow and a few new pictures.