More Crafting Adventures with Roseann

What a beautiful Fall weekend this was! Sorry it's almost over. My friend Roseann saw there was a class she wanted to take at Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, WI, so she talked me into taking it with her. That's only a 45 minute drive from Galena, where I spend lots of weekends. But we were driving from Chicago. That's a long way to drive and return in one day, almost 200 miles one way! But we did it. For three hours we focused on nuno felting, though it wasn't exactly what I'd envisioned. Nuno is about 10 years old. Instead of felting wool to wool, nuno involves felting wool through silk. But the most fun part of what we did was dyeing our white silk scarves. Kryss Marion, our teacher, had jars full of liquid dyes. We drenched the scarves in a vinegar/water bath, put them in plastic bags and added the dyes to the scarf with syringes. I love working in an intuitive way, and that's what this was. I had no idea what that scarf would like look after microwaving it in the bag for 30 seconds. When I laid it out on plastic, I loved the way it looked and didn't want to go any further. But I did. I grabbed wool rovings of similar colors and needle felted them at regular intervals. To make them stick even better, I used a more traditional felting technique. I poured soapy water on the wool, put another layer of plastic over the scarf and rolled it over a pool noodle. Then came lots of rolling back and forth, with my hands and arms, and then with my feet. It takes a long time for the felt to stick. It didn't totally work, but I needle felted more to make it stick. The needle runs the silk and gathers it, which is actually a pretty cool effect. Very artsy, of course. My fellow classmates liked the effect and declared my finished product as very Monet-like with watery turquoise and yellow and gold highlights. So I bought a couple more scarves to dye and felt, needle felting supplies, wool rovings. But the dye was my favorite part, though it was the quickest thing we did. I'm looking into doing that one of these days. Roseann showed me samples of burn out silk (hope that's right), which is sheer silk chiffon with white velvet patterns in it. Now those would be beautiful to dye! So I'm looking into where to get those scarves and the dyes.

I told Roseann about a free class at Caravan Beads today called Hammered Hoops. So we were back at it today. This time we hammered wire and added a dangly bead to create large hoop earrings. Very beautiful. I'm wearing mine as I write this. So now I'm looking into doing earrings with hammered wire. I bought more goodies: hammer, wire, files. But they were out of the steel plates that serve as a kind of anvil for the process. Talked to my brother and found out he has three vises. So tomorrow I'll get one from him. There's a metal surface on top where I can hammer. Hope it works out! I also heard about a great place called Sister Arts with knitting and other classes aimed at beginners or intermediate crafters. My crafting wanderings just keep expanding!

I have holiday fairs coming up soon, so I'd better get to work on the things I know how to do well. But I may throw in a few of these new interests to keep my potential customers wondering what will be for sale next year! And then there's my neglected novel. I'm thinking about publishing it on this blog in excerpts, which will force me to focus on it, maybe after all those holiday fairs are over.

Craft on!