A felt of two halves

The dark days are certainly with us now. Come the end of September I get a bit depressed at the prospect of six months of walking to work in the dark, but the darker evenings don't bother me so much and it was a lovely sky last night so I went out and photographed.

Anyhow we have done no dyeing nor felting for ages (working days off too much at the moment) so I was determined to do something on Sunday. Tish needed another ball of wool to finish off the cardi she is doing for Julie's baby. She had dyed some several months ago and then found she has not quite enough to finish. Fortunately we did keep a record of the colours we blended and were able to recreate something close enough. And I wanted to do some more felt and dye some more roving.

So this is what you end up with when you are not particularly inspired to anything and just plonk down any available colour.
In one half I used some left over batts of blended roving that I made ages ago, and I really like the mottled patchwork effect. And on the other half I used some pastel coloured corriedale roving for the background and scattered scraps of embroidery silk and other random bits of thread and held them in place with a fine layer of merino. I liked this part too, but they are really two separate projects on one piece of felt. So the whole things is distinctly unsatisfactory and may have to be cut up and used for something else.

The dyeing on the other hand came out beautifully and I am so pleased with them. I am thinking more felt rather than spinning. Although I have mostly bought professionally dyed roving I much prefer the softer more muted colours I get doing my own dyeing. These pieces are done very random and I think I will try and do something more planned next time. I bought a set of very expensive silicone measuring spoons (it's all the rage in cookshops these days apparently)(they go down to 1/8 of a teaspoon) so that we can mix the dyes more accurately and with more subtle variations, and reproduce colours more closely.
M and I took all my library books back, including the ones that were honestly not going to be read any time soon. I really enjoyed Felting Fashion by Lizzie Houghton, which was a lovely inspiring book, but I am getting the feeling as I read more that books will not help and I need to go to a workshop to learn and progress beyond my basic skills. I found a copy of 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke, which I have been wanting to read ever since reading 'The Ladies of Grace Adieu' back in March. We also bought 'A Clockwork Orange' for M to read as her 'banned book' (having unsuccessfully searched for a copy of Lady Chatterley) and a copy of Anna Karenina, which she found and decided it would be a challenge.