More felting and dyeing

I bought some undyed roving with plans to try spinning but instead decided to do a bit of felting. I helped at a workshop at my daughter's school several years ago and have a grasp of the basic process of felting. You start by making some fine layers of fibre. The stuff underneath is bubble wrap, this is designed to provide some friction when you agitate the felt.

Then you add a bit of embellishment, whatever you fancy really. Some of this is wool yarn teased apart, some is other bits of fibre. any kind of animal fibre will felt but you can use small quantities of almost anything, silk fibres work well for example. I then added another very fine layer of roving over the top to hold it all in place.

Next you use some warm water and soap and gently rub the fabric, then you roll it up in the bubble wrap and roll it backwards and forwards for a bit, then turn it 90 degrees and rewrap and roll again (basically till you get bored). The fibres should all hold together by this time. Then you 'shock' the felt by screwing it up and throwing it hard on the table, again until you get bored.

Finally you rinse the soap out. You can shape the edges while you felt it if you like, to make it tidier and pull it into shape. The finished size on my piece is about 6" square-ish.

We also did some more dyeing this week. I used some yarn that had already been dyed pale pink and just added stripes of red and purple with spaces so it could leech into the paler areas.

Over all it came out shades of pink with a few little patches of purple.

I recently learnt that my brother's step-daughter is going to join the family twins club, so I have more little people to knit for. I knitted a baby hat out of the other home dyed yarn and I am so pleased with it so I will probably do another one to match.