Yet another exciting week has passed here at my workshop. Not only did we have a fun day on Friday making handbags and hats, I have been working my own fleece.
At first I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew but it turns out its just another adventure on the felting road. As all felters know in order to make felt we need to add hot water and soap to fleece, we also know that in order to clean something we also need to use hot water and soap! Here-in lies the first hurdle to producing your own wool fleece – how to get all the muck (and thats putting it mildly!) and lanolin out of the sheeps coat without felting it in the process. After finding sutable containers and dividing the horrid grey, mucky, matted fleece into appropriate chunks I set about soaking. Do you know how hard it is not to touch, swirl, scrub something so dirty?
After several soakings and rinsings and a good few hours drying it was time to collect the children from school before setting about carding the now beautiful fluffy white fleece. This was the part of the process I was most looking forward to – and guess what? Yep my daughter comes through the door and says ” ooh fleece! Can I card it? I’m much better than you at it!” So off she went into the garden. She is probably right – she did do a wonderful job. However, the rain came and the laundrette/garden closed so I now must wait for the return of glorious sunshine to repeat the process.
I cant wait to see what fabulous felt I can make with it. Perhaps I might even try natural dyes!
