Spinning Wool into Yarn.

I decided to take all this wool roving I have lying around and spin it into some yarn on my drop spindle.  I took a class on drop spindling at Weaving Works a while back, and I have to say, I've pretty much forgotten everything on how to do it!  It felt like it was a little more work than I remembered, I'm not sure if I am quite dropping the spin correctly.

Anyhow, I spun a single ply yarn from a combination of colors and types of wool.  I then crocheted the warmest hat I've ever worn.  It might be too warm!  

It must be the icelandic wool. The yarn, even at single ply, was really thick.  

Next time, I might try and spin a thinner yarn, even though I love thick, chunky, uneven "art yarns." 

But overall, I am pleased with the hat.  Now it needs to get cold enough here for me to wear it outside!

Felted Rocks

I somehow felt like an incomplete fiber artists since I had not ever felted a rock.

So last night, I was inspired to felt some rocks using some icelandic wool fiber I have in my fiber stash. I gathered the rocks from outside my house, so they were all kind of uneven and more rounded.  I can see the potential if I had used smooth even rocks from the beach or a river.

I'm really into cairns and stacks of stones, so the smooth rocks, or rocks with more of a flat surface would be helpful for that.  A cairn of felted stones would be awesome indeed.  The process of felting a rock is simple enough, now I just need to get to the beach and gather some smooth stones!

Rustic Icelandic Wool Laptop Cozy

I used the last of a large quantity of icelandic wool to felt myself a cozy for my new macbook. I wet felted the cozy, and to create the pocket, I used a resist, then reinforced the edges. This cozy is a great to wrap this "hi-tech" laptop with some "lo-tech" rustic icelandic wool felt, which is super strong and durable. Now my laptop won't get all scratched up in my bag. This cozy will be left plain, but this project has tons of cute rustic design potential for folks who like things a little more interesting :) Or Hobbits straight from Middle Earth.