Monday, September 1, 2008

felting



When we had our holiday recently, we went to some very fun country markets where I was able to pick up some hand dyed wool and wool roving. I am desperate to learn how to felt properly, but for now I am just happy to make these little balls. Grace and I had a go at it last week and I really enjoyed it. Grace found it a bit to hard to get the wool to felt, so she mostly played with the water and made one big mess. We are hoping to make a few more of these to thread on string for jewelery.
Here's how we did it:

You will need
- wool roving
- big bowl or sink full of warm/hot soapy water
- lots of patience if your kids are joining in

Tear off a small amount of the wool (a few colours together is nice) and put it in the water. You need to use lots of friction, so rub the wool together in your hands, and keep rubbing and rolling it until it forms a ball. Keep your water hot and add more soap to the ball as you are rolling it in your hands if it is slow to felt. The finished ball should be fairly hard.

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