Author Archives: Teri Berry

Carding Fleeces in the Sunshine

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The UK weather is about to take a turn for the worse with the remnants of hurricane Bertha heading our way tomorrow so I have been making the most of the sunshine over the last couple of days and carding my White-faced Woodland (WFW) and Jacob fleeces outside.

I have been making a few rolags to try on my new drop spindle too:

And I made a felt sample from the WFW:

This is quite a coarse, hairy wool, definitely not a good choice for scarves but has lots of potential for slippers and handbags. Its shrinkage rate was 40%.

Those of you on the Felting and Fibre Studio Forum may recall I was looking to join a felt-making or other textile group a few months back and I think I may have found one through the International Feltmakers Association. It’s not particularly close (they meet in a village hall an hour’s drive away) but I am hopeful it will be worth the effort and they only meet once per month. Their next meeting is tomorrow – wish me luck!

With my City and Guilds course nearing an end I have also taken the plunge and signed up to a couple of workshops in addition to a 1-week contemporary weaving course I signed up to in May. Fiona Duthie’s Surface Design workshop starts at the start of September and runs for 6 weeks, then I have Karoliina Arvilommi‘s workshop in the middle of September and Tim Johnson’s weaving workshop at the end of the month. I am hoping that I can use Tim’s techniques to incorporate felt and textiles into some contemporary basket weaving. September is already shaping up to be a busy month! Exciting times 🙂

Cranleigh Show

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I spent this Saturday with my local Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers on their stand at the Cranleigh Agricultural Show. They have a stand there each year and demonstrate a mixture of spinning and weaving (dyeing is a bit impractical). I went along hoping to sell a few of my felted items and get to know some of the guild members better. I didn’t sell anything but I was taught to spin by the lovely Jo, she made it look so easy and I’m sure I made it look unnecessarily difficult. But in my defence you are trying to control 3 different elements simultaneously (keeping the foot treadle going so it spins in the right direction, thinning out the roving with your right hand while holding and feeding the thinned roving with your left), all far too much for my tiny brain to cope with!

This is the outcome of my labours…. a bit chunky and uneven (I call it “art yarn” ;o) ) but at least it has not unravelled.

Rosemary also attempted to teach me how to use a drop spindle. This was a little easier but my results were a tad disappointing. I clearly need more practice…

Here is our West Surrey Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers. You can just about make out a couple of my felt handbags hanging on the back wall of the tent. We were busy like this all day.

And a few more photos from the rest of the show.

Another bonus from this trip was picking up my first fleece to scour and prepare for felting (2 fleeces in fact), I’m afraid I forgot to take pictures while I was working on the first one but here is the second one (a Jacob) all neatly bundled up.

And partially unfolded, the sides are still folded in. The neck of the fleece is on the left. I was rather pleased to find it was mostly white wool (it’s much easier to dye different colours).

I spent this morning cutting off the dags, picking out bits of grass and dead bugs and separating the colours into separate buckets ready for scouring. It was nice (if a bit smelly) to be sitting in the sun playing with my fleeces.

I noticed on my first fleece that I still have small waxy lumps in the fleece even after soaking in detergent overnight and rinsing. Those of you who have scoured your own fleeces – do you have a preferred detergent or method for getting rid of the build up of lanolin?