Friday 17 February 2006

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow

Yesterday I took my daughters to a family event at our local art gallery entitled "Wool". It was very popular, and there were lots of children having a go at regular hand knitting, french knitting, making wool collages, felting, and weaving.

I reckon the most successful for us was the felting - and this necklace is what my 4yo daughter made!
The two balls are felted wool, made from coloured fleece wound round and then wetted and rubbed vigorously between the palms into ball shapes. OK I had to help out here when her hands got tired, but she did most of it herself.
The balls go so hard that you have to knock a nail through with a hammer to get the hole for stringing it onto the elastic - an amazing process to literally watch it felting in your hands!

We'll be trying more of this at home I think..

As promised, here's the Rain Dance Shawl getting its edging. It's a slow process as each edging piece has 40 rows.

It doesn't help that the chart from Elann had an error - it started off with 20 stitches but suddenly jumped to 21 stitches from row 3 onwards. The chart has now been corrected.

3 comments:

Annie said...

It's the slippery slope now, y'know. Once you've started felting, it's impossible to stop.

Unknown said...

The Wool event sounds great,sorry we had to miss it. Roll on school next week, hope to be in Beatties on Tuesday.

scarletprincess said...

Hi stef

I'll be making an appearance (yay) at knit chat today. Patons symphony is wonderful (says a girl who loathes acrylic). I made all the xmas scarves and gifts in it since most of my family are allergic to wool! The shawl is looking great btw.
xxx