HomeWork

Phew. Deep breath. A whole lot of activity, a whole lot of sleep and then a rush again. School ended a week ago, and as I prepared to leave for the Black Sheep Gathering, ready the house for my father who was going to stay with my son and finish some custom orders, I was struck down by an acute sore throat. It left me speechless and gasping in pain. Needless to say, we had to cancel the trip to Oregon and I was forced to sleep for the better part of four days until my strep culture finally came back positive.

My parents stepped in as the heroes of the day, taking over caring for the house and for me without skipping a beat. As soon as the youngest returned from a birthday party, they whisked the children north of the border so I could continue my convalescence and catch up with last minute business details before shutting down my production for the summer.

First thing on my list was to post the rest of the nunofelt scarves I photographed in early June. There are still two more nunofelt scarves in the rosewood series not photographed, and a couple more turquoise scarves, but they will have to wait until fall.

Two custom orders for purple collars prompted me to begin a new series unexpectedly in late June. I was trying unsuccessfully to make a small crescent of felt lay flat on my neck. When it refused to cooperate, I cut little points to give it some ease and voila!

In addition to the pink collar, I made four larger purple collars and a few pieces of fabric using a merino/tencel roving blend - a total of twelve pieces for two custom orders. Unfortunately the delicate nature and the beautiful drape of the merino/tencel fabric made it too fine to hold up for this form. The buttons would have ripped a hole in the fabric, even with a reinforced buttonhole. I’ll have some experimenting to do with those pieces later.

With a custom order for four felt boxes left, and a tutorial to photograph for a new kit, I’m just about ready to clear out. Maybe Saturday if all goes well in the next two days. In the meantime, I’ve photographed most of my current inventory and posted it in my etsy shop. There are still a few more pieces, but I really hate photographing myself, and as the clouds started to clear this morning, the battery on my camera died, so I called an end to the photo session.

One of the new business directions I’m exploring: DIY felting kits. The first in a series is a felt soap kit, available in four varieties: Green Tea, Verbena, Lavender and Unscented.

Thanks to Lora, who documented the process yesterday, a photo tutorial and video tutorial are now ready, with links included in the instruction sheet.

The first pair will go to the teachers in my daughter and son’s classes. More will be for sale at the AP Business Fair, and in my etsy shop.

PS. Check out Lora’s blog Little Kids, Big City - great ideas for Seattle families who want to know what is happening in the city.

Just because Sue asked, here is the reveal: I’ve created a new category in my etsy shop. It is kind of like gift wrapping, if you treat your face like an asset.

These are not for the curly haired alone, but a great mass of hair does look good bound up with colorful silk and felt.

More than just a name, I spent a wonderful afternoon in Volunteer Park, one of Seattle’s gems located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood with Paola and her daughter Primavera.

Playful, patient and endlessly tolerant of my adjustments, Paola modeled the latest SpiderFelt pieces while Primavera ran in circles around our feet. Her bubbling personality added an extra special dimension our photo shoot, bringing sincere smiles to her mother’s eyes.

I took over 500 photos in two hours, as Paola modeled twenty-one pieces. I will be updating my shop with a couple of pieces every day. Many, many thanks to mother and daughter for their assistance.

There isn’t much story to tell here. I don’t remember how this idea materialized, but it has been lurking around for a while.

Let me present: custom felt name banners (ugh, what a clunky name). You choose the background color and we work together to select a motif that can be represented in felt.

I hate the title, but couldn’t think of anything more zippy. Where are my creative powers? I’m hoping that an imaginative writer will make a better suggestion.

The background for each banner is made with wool roving from Harrisville Designs. They have 56 colors available, though I have approximately half currently in stock. These two samples measure 17″ wide by 12″ tall.

In addition to being posted in my etsy shop, these samples will be on display at Venue in Ballard.

Enough people commented on the shame of hiding the colorful parts of the pincushion on the bottom, that I worked to alter the design.

I started with a small snake of felt, needled it a little to hold the edges together, then added successive layers, needling a little as I went along. With each layer, I varied the colors along the length, which accounts for the variations between each pincushion. When it was large enough to draw snide remarks from my sidekick on the sofa, I put it aside.

The next day I wetfelted it as best I could, an unwieldy process considering the size of the roll. Next came rinsing and then slicing. Finally, each piece was finished off with ten minutes of needling to trap the fibers and firm up each individual piece.

These are now listed in my etsy shop, either with or without felting needles.

We profited from unusually warm temperatures last weekend to break out a gift I bought for the family on Etsy before Christmas: a Backyard Bird Nest Experiment Kit from the TheNatureNut. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen and heard robins and  chickadees (and a red-chested bird I can’t identify) around our tree again, so this seemed like a great time to pull it out. I didn’t have to ask my son twice if he wanted to help hang them from the branches of our cherry tree; he was straddling a limb before I had found my shoes.

The handmade kit comes with four wire cages stuffed with different materials: straw, shredded colored paper, yarn and dog hair; there is an experiment observation sheet where we record the nesting material, staring date, empty date and comments, as well as a second observation sheet for recording the types of birds inspecting or taking the materials. In addition, Kathleen provides information about ways to attract birds to your yard, suggested nesting materials, resources and instructions for recording and tabulating the results of the experiment. Children are encouraged to monitor the cages to see which material is used more than the others, and to look around the neighborhood for nests built with our stuffing.

Browsing through her shop on a rainy November day, I couldn’t resist adding these maple seed butterflies to my shopping cart. They seemed full of promise for spring.

Cleverly packaged with a styrofoam block and recycled water bottles turned upside down to provide a protective casing, these little butterflies sat on our windowsill for months waiting for the weather to turn. Now they sit in our garden as a sweet reminder that the real butterflies will be out soon enough.

It seems as the grey skies hold over Seattle, I am drawn over and over to a color I can’t quite describe: it is a blend of blue and green that reflects the sky and the forests in the waters of the Pacific Northwest, as seen best here.

These two items have just posted to my shop in honor of the new Etsy tool: Shop Local. In an effort to encourage last minute shoppers to find a local source for last minute purchases, the programmers have put the finishing touches on a neat resource to bring you the 100 vendors in your local area who have most recently posted items to their shop. You can find the button in the ‘Buy’ category.

As soon as I saw this feature was activated, I had to post a couple of items to my shop. The first is a nunofelt experiment I hinted at here, but still haven’t fully documented. The second is the fourth in a series of merino felt collars made with the Tidal Wave colorway from etsy vendor ‘copperpot‘.

As the year winds to a close, I’d like to offer my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to all of the readers who check in here. Your comments and encouragement have meant so much to me as work towards finding my way. Be well and do good work.

The dust has settled, the smoke has cleared and I’ve finally finished uploading my current stock of merino felt scarves into my etsy shop.

For weeks leading up to the craft fairs last weekend, I was working furiously to create new stock. It was a rush, and lots of fun because I tried out so many new ideas, getting a handle on how different rovings work (or don’t) and experimenting with form and shape.

But I’m beat. Tired. Whooped. Time to sit down. Other than fulfilling some custom orders from the shows, I’m flipping the lid on my squeeze bottle for a few weeks and try to catch up with my family again. Where did they go? Has anyone seen my kids?

In an effort to get ahead of the game, last weekend we sat down as a family for three hours of bonding over soap and wool. Our task: make felt soaps for two custom orders and to prepare stock for the holiday craft shows.

If you’ve never seen felt soap, imagine soap in a sweater; the wool acts as a gentle exfoliant while the soap is kept wrapped in the felt. Every last bit of soap is used up, and you don’t have to do the slippery sliver dance in the shower with the last shreds of the bar. We use pure olive oil soap and various types of dyed wool.

Lance softened the soap in the microwave so the bars would cut nicely. Cold soap crumbles all over the place, especially if you try to cut a large bar. Thirty-five seconds on 50% power warms it just enough to slice like butter.

While he and Owen were busy unwrapping, warming and slicing the bars, I started making piles of roving on the table to create pleasing color combinations. Pretty soon, we realized it was most efficient for me to choose the colors, draft the wool and wrap the bars so Lance and Owen could felt them with the hot, soapy water.

Three hours later, we had a colorful pile of felt soaps in four scents: verbena, green tea, lavender and pure olive oil (unscented). Over the last two days, I’ve sold at least twenty bars, but we still have more of the raw materials so there will be a repeat in our near future.

If you are interested in trying this on your own, remember that not all wools felt equally. If possible, look for wool from corriedale or blue-faced leicester (BFL) sheep. Merino works, but it is more expensive than you need. Romney really doesn’t work well. Our local fiber store sells roving by the ounce that is simply called “NZ Carded Wool”; the breed isn’t specified but it works well.

Sets of three soaps are posted in my etsy shop for $15. I’m also offering workshops at my house or yours where I provide the materials and teach what you need to know for $3/bar. Let’s make some bubbles!