Monday 30 June 2014

Felting with cats

Pip enjoying the blown vinyl feel of my resist!

I always shut myself in the kitchen to felt, to prevent the many paws from assisting me. But the weather is so warm and as the cats all seemed quite content and sleepy outside I thought I'd give it a go. Pip was the first to get involved, as the plastic foam packaging was rather nice to roll around on and dig your claws into. 


Mojo was content to stay outside in the new cat basket underneath the sweet scented surfinas, along with Indiana who was lounging on the table.



Saturday afternoon produced my sisters birthday bag, my first attempt at resist felting and I was pleased with the outcome...I just hope she is!



It just needs some embroidery on the top flap, and a strap to finish it off. At least sunny days make for items drying very quickly.



The baskets are coming along lovely and filling door outdoor space with lots of colours and scents and wildlife too, butterflies and bees in the day and moths at night. The purple petunias are beginning to trail, so maybe they will do what it said on the label!


My fuchsias are about to burst from their lantern shapes and I can't wait to see those frilly dresses as I can't remember what colours I picked! 


The calenedula were just soooo orange in the sunshine! My two favourite colours, orange and green.

My cadbury purple petunias are just so velvety, and the colour makes me think of chocolate!



Anyway time to get on with the felting, but not before actually scribbling down some ideas in my notebook which has seen quite a bit of use. The plan was to make a new post bag in green. So I made a template to make sure the edges were straight to start with. It was too big for the kitchen worktop so I had to use the dining room table. The plan is to just join those edges so it makes a block bottomed bag, but this time I measured more accurately so it should look neater.



David came in with a nice cup of tea and said he felt the urge to roll about on all that fluffiness, and I know what he means! Foster kitten Zoe was evicted as it was just too much for her to bear! She is finally re-rehabilitated after her dreadful start in life and it has taken 6 months of much patience to get her to like humans and help from Chloe another foster who was taken to the vet for a PTS because they didn't want her anymore. Now I just have to find her a loving home.




So the base was the easy bit, now for the design.

With the worlds 'less is more' ringing in my head, I utterly deviated from the plan drawn earlier and did my own thing! It was supposed to be all shades of green and very muted, but after looking at that calendula the orange, yellow and browns came out!


And although it looked OK to me for a while, I felt it was a bit busy (yes me thinking it was too much!). Bearing in mind I hadn't used any angelina or curly locks at all and felt quite proud I had resisted that temptation, but had gone a bit mad with introducing the hot colours. So I took off the leaves in the corners and re-arranged the smaller stars, still not sure whether to just strip it back to green.




Final decision was to leave it like this and get on with rolling. So back out to the kitchen as this table just breaks your back as it's too low.


At least the view when rolling is pretty this time of year! David wanted cappuccino coffee so he got roped into some of the rolling whilst I made us some.  I stupidly forgot to photograph the end result, so that will have to come later. But it was a lovely sunny weekend at home, making things, drinking coffee and sitting in the sun and tickling cats!



Wednesday 18 June 2014

Wimbledon strawberries


Whilst the world is mad on football I'm looking forward to Wimbledon....and strawberries although there have already been plenty of dishes of strawberries with no tennis involved!

 I've made 5 sets of strawberry markers to celebrate June and the long days of sunshine it brings. Available on Etsy now.  


Monday 9 June 2014

Sunny Sundays

Nothing better than a sunny Sunday to make you get up and get on with life. I had finished all chores and orders on Saturday to free up Sunday to do what I wanted. This consisted of a leisurely al fresco breakfast, followed by a few hours felting.

After the success of the notebook I thought I'd try it again but slightly smaller scale. I should know by now that the smaller the item the harder it is to get detail, but hey ho!
 I really like the sea tones of the blue one, this is my favourite part of felting, laying out the fibres as it all looks so fluffy.
This one is a bit garish, but I thought I'd give it a go and see what it turned out like.
 The blue one looks ok although it ended up smaller than planned.
This one just doesn't look right at all! But maybe it'll perk up once I've added some machine embroidery.


The hanging baskets are starting to come along now, and I just love the colours of the osteospermum 
And our neighbours gave us a lovely wicker cat basket. I put a fleece blanket in the bottom and it was instantly occupied! A succession of cats all gave it a vote of approval throughout the afternoon!



So not wanting to waste the sunshine inside felting we took the dogs to the local river for a swim and walk though the woods.
 It's a lovely riverbank walk and at this time of year the greens are just beautiful.
 I liked the reflections and shadows of this tree.
 The wild rhubarb or butterbur is in full glory, it's about chest high.
 Moushka and Laika enjoying cooling off in the river. Laika will only paddle, but Moo likes to have a good swim and their coats are always very soft and shiny after a dip in the river.
 Love the green of the water weeds, it's like a mermaids hair.
The woods are a nature reserve and this is their very posh hide! We did see a family of baby wrens but they were too far away to photograph. I felt refreshed and invigorated after our walk, ready for another week of work.




Tuesday 3 June 2014

Felted Notebook



If you do any sort of craft you'll know what I mean when you have a design in you that just has to come out, and you can't wait to make it. Friday a thought came into my head whilst walking the dogs for a felted notebook. 

It didn't matter that it was 8pm by the time I got to start it, it just had to be done! Dinner was a quick meal much to David's dismay as felting isn't a fast process, but by 9.30 I had my finished piece of felt hung out to dry and I had the satisfied feeling that for a change it had come out exactly as I imagined!


Saturday I did the machine embroidery and even that was to my satisfaction, and the troublesome sewing machine behaved impeccably! So I just have to now make the notebook to go inside, add a button and tie to keep it closed and my notebook will be finished! I like this design a lot and it may appear on the new mail bag.



Plus there are some new marker designs on Etsy.