experimentations

A while back the boy saw a picture of a mat made of felted wool balls that looked like river stones. It was really beautiful... and also REALLY expensive. So I did some quick internet searches and found this tutorial. Looks easy right? So we got some roving from a friend of mine who apparently has an attic full of roving, of the stashed-beyond-life-expectency quantity, and decided to try it out. Unfortunately we could only get undyed, naturally creamish coloured roving, but we thought we'd experiment anyway.

Warning: ours are NOT as beautiful as those portrayed in the tutorial:



Some of them turned out OK, once we got the hang of it. But they're not the right colour (although I think we could dye them post-felting). Anyway, it was a fun experiment to try out together! Also - large balls of felted roving take a LONG time to dry. I believe we worked on them either Wednesday or Thursday night and they're still wet as of this posting.

The only other fiber related thing I have to show right now is this:



Remember this blanket? I posted this picture back in July:



There is maybe another foot or so of actual knitting on it... I work on it in my spare time when I have some extras bits of sock yarn left over and no other projects on the go. It's a slow knit but an enjoyable one when I get to it. I have no intentions of powering through it, and couldn't even if I wanted to as the yarn comes only when I've finished another project and have left overs.

I guess that's it for knitting related news... I leave for a research semester in Spain on Monday and will be there for four and a half months. I'll try to take pictures of knitting in front of interesting Spanish monuments! ;)