Friday, August 14, 2009

Bargain Found In Country Town

The closest place to me with a small supermarket is about 20km's away which is about a 10 min trip. It's an old out of the way little country town. I dare say their over heads would be minimal due to the age and distance of the shops. There are 2 second hand shops and a fantastic Antique and Craft shop that you would definately get lost in for a couple of hours!
It's a bit like a rabbit warren whilst you are navigating your your way around the delights the store has on offer, mmm.
Below are 3 items I picked up for a mere $1.00 at the second hand shop, the bag of 4 x 20gm cotton and the 2 very large heavy duty nylon that would be perfect for soles of the slippers I have been making, which are now worn down to a much thinner ply.

Oh and one more thing, here is a sneak look at the new project I am working on, you'll bever guess what it will be, but the components I need to complete the project are sitting right in the picture, LOL. Go on and have a guess.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

I'm Hooked!

Ha,ha. Hooked up to the internet that is. I have not picked up a hook in over a month, but I have an idea roaming around inside of my head, due to a request that was made of me. I also feel a little out of sorts in my new craft room, I keep moving the furniture around to make it more comfy, but I'm still not pleased and there is so much still to do in other parts of the house. I caught that dam swine flu as I was moving, so it slowed things down for me so much. But hey, I'm good now so on with thing's. Hope you are all well and I'll be checking out your blogs and back onto the forums too. Take care the Cat, ha,ha.
My daughter snapped this of me whilst I was sleeping.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Hello to all my Crafty Crochet and knit Friends!

I've been off line, but I'm on my way back, so stay tuned for some more mischief from the Cat!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Felting My Crochet For The Very First Time

Well I found this free pattern on line, for a pair of hexagon boot slippers. Now knowing US foot sizing is different to AU sizing, I decided to make them im 100% wool that I could felt if they were too big for me. As you can see from the picture below, they were far too big. So now my very first felting project had to come to light.
Compare this picture to the picture underneath it for the felting success.
Small enough to fit me now. But I did have an adventure felting these.
I first tried felting by hand, but the slippers were too big to do it by hand, I even had them boiling in a pot for more shrinkage. Scrubbed lots and lots of a high quality dish washing liquid into them and even gave them the shock cold water process. I was not getting far at all by this stage.
The idea of machine felting was against me from the very beginning. I have a front loader. Once the cycle begins, you cannot open the door to check on the felting process, also my machine is not connected to hot water, so I had to fill up and boil the kettle several times to fill the lower part of the machine. I thought I would be fine to begin the cycle, front loaders use low suds powder or liquid and I neglected to rinse out all of that high quality dish washing liquid I had begun with! Eeek, my machine is not supposed to look like this!
Eeek! It is foaming from places it should not be!
It's foaming from more places!
I have a foaming mess!
It just gets worse!
After draining and cleaning up, I begin another cycle with hot water. This is what the machine should look like when it has a load in it. No foam! My slippers are actually in there at this point too.
Once the second cycle of the felting had finished I saw the results! Yes, thay have felted and shrunk! I stuff them with news paper to shape them and dry them off in front of my little fan heater.
Not all of my crocheting went to plan either, I ran out of the blue wool on the second sole and had to use another colour, oh well, I'll be walking on that part any how's.
I'm sure I could have felted these a little bit better and they do need a little more shrinkage. But wait for this, after this fiasco, a US crochet buddy said, I could have just washed the slippers first then put them into the dryer for felting! Why oh why did I have to find this out the hard way. I am going to wash then once more and put them into the dryer, I can also open the dryer door to check on their progress.
When they first dried I was so excited and put them on, then ran into the kitchen to make a cuppa', woops! I nearly went for a sixer, the soles are far too slippery! I know there are several ways to make a woolen sole non slip, I just have to plan that one out next.
I do hope you get some enjoyment out of reading this post!
By the way, I think felting is just a fancy word for shrinking wool, what do you think?