Start of 2022

It's already the 22nd of January!  Oh, 22nd of 2022... that's a lot of 2s!  It's about time I write something new since my previous blogpost was my Christmas one.

Tatting and other similar activities are still on the back-burner.  I do a little bit here and there but no larger projects that I can tackle at the moment.

Instead a holiday project was to have a go at felting wool.  You know I have those fleeces that I'm spinning and knitting... well, my son had seen a video of someone felting wool using cardboard so we decided to give it a try.

You first have to pull all the wool fibres apart into tiny wisps so that it's all very fine and airy.  Place it all in a cardboard box and make sure the thickness is even everywhere.  Ours was about 4 inches thick initially.

Then you turn the box over and you have a nice "square" of thick wool fibres.

The person in the video we'd seen rolled his fibres in cardboard but we used bubble wrap instead.

So you wet the fibres and then roll them up in the bubble wrap.

And then you have to keep rolling and rolling and then unwrapping and turning

your wool piece and keep rolling until the fibres start blending together.

As you can see we used brown and white wool.

It's not quite finished

but we're getting there!

Otherwise I've been making more newspaper baskets.  I used purple cabbage water to dye the paper for this one.  It gives it a subtle lilac colour.  I dye the rolls first, let dry, then varnish them with diluted varnish  and let dry again before I used the rolls for making the basket.

I've now run out of my dyed rolls so I need to make more!

I finished the rim (will have to show another photo in next blogpost)

but I still have to make the handle.

I made another smaller one that I gave to my daughter:

And there's another blue one of which I just realised I don't have a good photo

(so for next blogpost).

And to finish, a very little bit of tatting.  I really want to keep working on this collar but I just can't tat much at all so it will be a while before I can make much progress on it.  *Sigh*

I hope all is well with you all and that your new year is off to a good start.  I'd love to hear what projects you are currently working on after the holidays.

Best wishes,

Frivole