Summers Over

It seems to me once our fair has gone that the summer is over in Reno. In early years it was more the idea that school is starting that ended summer. Now when the fair ends I start thinking of filling the barn with hay and stacking the wood for cold winter nights. I love the fall when my nesting instincts set in and I can wear my warm fuzzy clothes out to the barn. I am so ready for Fall!
Our state fair was a success again this year. My entries did well but I'm still looking to win the big ribbon of Best in Show. Maybe next year. I already have ideas in my head. I can't help it I'm very competitive and love a good challenge!
My bowl o' balls was a big hit with the judge. The first words out of her mouth were
"Ah, chumming for cats!" I laughed so hard. Never thought of them that way. They received a blue ribbon under felt home deco, no other entries in this category. This is the second bowl of balls I've made. I just love them and I believe they took more time to make than the purses I felt.

The felt purse entered has a blue ribbon and a Reserve Grand in the felt division. My friend beat me with her Grand Champion felt saddle pad made out of alpaca fiber no less. I have to admit the saddle pad is wonderful. I entered two skeins of yarn. This one was third place. Seems it needs more twist in the ply. I did this last year and now I will learn to ply better to compete with Becky's cabled yarn. There was one other skein, picture in post below, that did not make it home with me. Not sure what happened to it. It is a shetland and silk blend and did get a blue ribbon in it's class. I gave this skein enough twist in the ply. Guess someone liked it too much and took it home. I'd bet it will poop up at one of the next guild meeting, it does have my name on it.

I almost forgot to mention the two fleece I entered. Hue came in second to K.G. Even with all that beautiful crimp and shine. He just didn't have the consistency threw out his fleece. His entire fleece is soft and usable it just isn't all the way down the britch crimpy! If we have totally uniform fleece does that take our primative shetland sheep out of the primative class and into the modern improved class of sheep?

Off To The Fair

The Nevada State Fair is starting this Wednesday August 20th. I have a few shetland wool items that will be entered this year. Two skeins of yarn, one white, my wether K.G. with 20% silk added "bling" and one moorit skein from Valla my yearling ewe. In the felt class I'm entering my purse made with Annie's fleece and a bowl of felt balls. The felt balls are drying and not made with shetland. Then in the fleece show I've entered two shetland fleece. K.G.'s five pound fleece and below

Hue's fleece. Hue is another wether no longer with us. Below is his beautiful silver fleece weighting in at 4.9 pounds, these are skirted weights. Nothing like a big wether fleece for the fair. If Sharon doesn't enter any fleece this year we may not have any competition in the primitive fleece class. With no competition in Nevada I'm not sure how these shetland fleece would fair at some big show like Black Sheep. Posted by Mim August 18,2008

Newest Felt Purses

This cute little purse is the end product from my "Felting 101" post. The colored wool is BFL I dyed at Sharon's house with Becky, the big dye day! The pastel colors are much nicer than I would have thought. I guess I do like pastels. I will be taking the above purse and this grey shetland wool purse to
The Bare Naked Alpaca Sale.

This will be at the Lazy K Ranch right up the road from here. This grey purse is the first purse I made with the straps being part of the whole purse. There is I-cord around the edges of the entire purse. The I-cord is hand spun yarn from the same fleece as the purse. Annie my shetland ewe! The buttons are from "Jimmy Beans" here in Reno.

Felting 101

I took the time to do some felting today! It's been a long time since all the lambing this last month was my main focus. This is what I've decided to use. The colored roving is BFL that I died this winter. The batts of fiber are Shay my shetland ewe and some moorit merino wool I have from Terry Mendenhall. I ran the two together on my drum carder to blend them and form some batts that are easier to felt with than locks or thin roving. The yarn I get from "Embellishment Village" on the web. Layed out on plastic and a bamboo window shade is my resist a piece of cardboard from a Cheerio box. The yarn and colored roving go first to decorate the outside of the purse. I make them inside out! Now I lay some of Shays wool over that in light whispy pieces going right to left then up and down. The piece of netting will be placed over the top then I wet it with a sponge or my sprinkler ball (next picture) flip the whole thing over fold the edges to the other side and lay out more wool. Wet that and flip and fold and do it again and again till there are three to four ounces of wool, half on each side of the cardboard resist. All the wool is layed out and the edges are folded over and it is soaking wet with hot water and some olive oil soap. I make the soap here. This picture shows the purse with card board resist inside, a plastic bag I put my hand in to rub the tender wool some olive oil soap, netting, sponge and my spinkler ball that Linda Lu gave me for Christmas. A felting must! Now the purse is rubbed and rubbed and rubbed then rolled and rolled and rolled in the bamboo window shade. This entire process of laying out the wool and rolling has taken a few hours and the purse is ready to cut open and turn inside out.

The card board is carefully taken out and the purse is turned. It is very tender now since the inside was not able to full because the wool is so thick. Not quite done. This is a prefelt still. Needs more fulling to become a durable felt. This side of the purse needs more color also to match the other side. And of course no project is done until it's embellished!

Felt Purses

Ok since I can't figure out how to get the pictures and text to go where I want this is my second purse made with a shetland merino blend. I've found out that most of the shetland felts just fine without the merino so I'm not doing that anymore. This purse has a silk nuno felt inlay with nuno felt pockets on the inside for phones and stuff.

Now on to the first picture!

In June our local alpaca breeders are having a big alpaca sale at Kay's place not far from our valley. I'll be setting up a booth to teach spinning on a wheel or a drop spindle and will be able to sell things I've been making with my wool. These are a few of the felt purses I've finished this winter.

This purse has shetland wool (Shay, one of my ewes) as the main wool, the dyed wool is BFL I dyed in roving. There is also yarn pieces and some prefelt merino felted in the design. The top edge is I-cord from yarn spun with the BFL and beads.