I had a lovely day with Karen, my crafting friend. She knows everything I need to know and is willing to teach me, and provide lunch too! Excellent.
Flossie has been working hard with her Su (Suzhou) embroidery and this is her second piece.
I wanted to know how best to preserve, mount and frame her work. I have first dibs on it all – mother’s perk.
I had been given some left-over foam board (from the Turriefield veg boards saying “hello”/”thank you”). They were still perfectly useable and Karen cut the right sizes for each piece of silk and showed me how to stitch behind to stretch the beautiful works of art, including corners (hospital I shall do).
Then it was the turn of Lambie’s now-washed fleece. I had brought it over to learn how to flick card (now about to order one for myself) to open up the locks. There was of course the beautiful Breagha, the sprocker, on paw at all times to “help”.
And offer enccouragement. I was suitable encouraged!
Lambie’s fleece is a double-coated fleece which means he is part carpet (coarse hair) and part curly useable wool.
So I watched and learnt my new craft.
The useful bits – lovely opened up wool and locks (note the lingo).
The hair will be useful – I will take it south with me for my mother. She said something about making Shetland ponies.
I tried to divide everything into black or white – wool or hair – and I think it will be good to felt with too.
Anyway, we have plenty of the raw material in its natural smelly state to work with.
Part the 2 tomorrow, when Karen demonstrated more carding with a drum carder and English combs (it was a scary instrument of torture to me).
I am loving this.
Make lambies for sale for visitors with his wool -and it can take a while to learn to spin- some can do instantly and others like let me take a while ( four years) looking forward to seeing the results
Not planning to learn to spin. I thought I could make Lambies from Lambie and others.
It’s fun watching you go full in with the fiber arts. Next you’ll be spinning and weaving. There’s nothing quite like using wool from your own sheep. 🙂
I’m so excited to watch you doing all these things! I’ve been treating ‘Ster’s fleece like gold: washing very small amounts super carefully, and flicking before spinning. It is so gorgeous to work with! I’ll need to stop being so reverent with it, though, or I’ll never get anything finished. It’s a very meditative, centering, quasi-spiritual process for me (Hail the Lordly ‘Ster!) and that’s good to have even if I don’t have much to show so far.
Flossie’s embroidery is exquisite!
Be careful with all that grasping and pulling to separate the two layers of Lambie and flick his locks. Tendons will complain. I’ll email you links to some of my preferred tools.
Beautiful embroidery.
I can’t wait to see what will be made from Lambie’s wool.
Flossie’s embroidery is gorgeous!