Sunday 17 July 2005

Fimo and felting

Mainly felting really. Finished the french market bag and here it is, volumous in it's splendour, hanging off a part of Pooch.
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I used 4 and a bit balls of debbie bliss soho from getknitted.net (great range, strange service). It's huge, I thought to myself, but it will felt down about a 1/3 so will be fine. You see I had thought ahead and used 7mm needles instad of the recommended 5.5 and the fabric had come out really nicely:
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OK, so it felted down by about 2/3 and is now a handbag rather than a market bag, and quite possibly the sturdiest one ever! A la....
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Very excitedly danced into Pooch's high tech programming/my stash room and of course, he saw a different use for it!
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Incidentally he says he is going to start a blog called "pooch's kennel" so that he can put his side of the story across when I am moaning about him on here...lol.

I bought one of those french knitting dollies as i-cord seems a bit too movement intensive and am going to needle felt some embellishment onto it. Watch this space (will be a while as the fabric is so thick it may take weeks to dry, even in this weather).

On to the fimo...I wanted to try and make some beads that looked like balls of yarn so that's what the ones on either end are. In terms of authenticity I prefer the left, but for ease of making it is the right for sure. The middle one is because when wonderful Trudie sent me her fimo stash she had some fabulous silver and gold in it which I had never seen before so I thought I'd try a bit out and see what happened - I love it!
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Had emailed silkwood about some yarn i saw at nickerjacs - the one I mentioned at the end of my last post. Tess emailed me back and it is £12 for 100g and if you see this stuff you would expect twice that. But best of all she has invited me out to their studios as well - I haven't been this excited since Nickerjac invited me to hers! They have all the angora rabbits there and instead of uding a microwave to fix the dye they have big ovens - or so I hear! You can tell I'm excited because my exclamation mark quotient has markedly increased.

All this means today is going really well so far despite the fact I hardly slept. Headaches are there but not bad enough to need paracetamol and despite my wonderfully creative day already I have more planned for the rest of it. If all goes to plan i will have some dyed sock cotton using those fabric marker pens I bought on Monday by nightfall. *Sigh* if every day could be like this one....

Also excellent news adding to my happiness - secret pal has been in touch and parcel two is on the way. I keep hoping parcel one will turn up as at the moment it is still awol. So disappointing for both of us but am sure I will adore whatever the second contains.

6 comments:

scarletprincess said...

Well your fimo balls look fab and I really love your french market bag!

Becky said...

That French Market bag certainly does look sturdy - it's looks great though - sure it will look even better post embellishment. Love the Fimo too - what a lovely idea making balls of yarn - are you planning on using them as needle toppers, or was it just a random experiment ?

You've had such a creative day already, I don't know how you've got room for any more !

Iris said...

Woah, that yarn really did shrink a lot, didn't it! I did a swatch for mine beforehand and it hardly shrank at all (which is weird, really, because it is more sturdy - how does that happen without shrinkage?!). The bag looks very cute, though, and I LOVE the colours!

Anonymous said...

Love the bag Alex, looks fab! :)

RoxyK said...

Wow - a super creative day - fimo and felting! Hope you get on better with the french knitting dodah than I did. Gave up and went back to iCord.....

Anonymous said...

It was good to meet you on Saturday! I've been tempted with fimo recently too, not sure if I'm going to get to actually play with it since BRooke noticed it in my drawer though - I may have to share. :(