A basket bag made with the urine reduced indigo on border leister wool.   The greenish design was dyed with golden rod and overdyed with indigo.  It has the same decoration on both sides.  Once the wool has made it to this stage there is zero urine smell left.  Remember that the wet felting process involves a lot of soap?

This would be a great basket for spinning or knitting.  It could hold half a pound of wool or more and will sit by itself on the floor.  Or it could be a nice market basket, strong enough to be filled with 5 pounds of apples.

I made these cute little booties for a friend’s baby.  They are really soft, made out of alpaca.

I realized that since I’ve been making fezs since long before I started this blog and I think of them as rather common place, I don’t have any on the blog!  However they are an important part of Ottoman costuming.  Here are some examples of felt hats in Ottoman era art. (Sorry I neglected or take down sources, or maybe the places I found them did not offer sources, but I believe these are both from the 16th century and are from European artists who are depicting what they saw while in Turkey.)  Notice both the flat top fez variety and taller cone variety.  Most hats seemed to be a base for turbans, and I suspect many of the turbaned figures where you can’t see the hat still are wearing one under all of that turban.  And some hats are worn by themselves. 

Here are some examples of my hats.

I haven’t made any really tall and pointy hats like those in the paintings because I haven’t known anyone that wants to wear one like that.  Sometimes it can be hard to recreate some fashions that may seem a little silly to us modern folk.

I went to a Spinners’ Flock meeting last week and came home with a drum carder.  Spinners’ Flock is a lovely fiber guild based out of Chelsea Michigan.  I’ve been buying fiber from their sales now for years, but last week decided to join and discovered they have equipment rental!  I’d been thinking about buying a drum carder for awhile now, but just couldn’t bring myself to shell out the $4oo.  However its a lovely arrangement to join this guild and be able to rent it the few times a year I will use it.  I’ve discovered turning that handle is a bit addictive, I processed about 5 pounds of fiber in the first 3 days I had the machine.  However its not cost effective for big batches as it takes about two hours per pound of fiber.  Better to pay the fiber mill $6 a pound for big batches and save the drum carder for dying and blending experiments.

 Here is a picture of the lovely Border Leister wool that I dyed with indigo and urine as a reducing agent.  To my patrons who may be grossed out by that, don’t worry if I make anything for sale from this wool it will be clearly marked, and considerably more expensive.   When the batt is pulled off the drum carder it is really fluffy.  The pile of carded wool at the end is several batts stacked together and is probably only half a pound.

I’ve been back  for a couple of weeks from the largest of all SCA events, Pennsic War, held each year in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania.  Each year 10-15 thousand people show up for this two week event.  A dizzying array of activities are available including fighting in mock battles, attending classes on all manor of medieval topics, seeing live music, dance and drama, shopping, and of course no end of socializing opportunities.    All this combined with typical August heat is exhausting and one must pace oneself.  And it is only after being home for two weeks that I have the energy to write this post. 

I had several positive felting experiences this year.  First I participated in my first Pennsic Arts and Science display.  

Everyone that wants to participate brings their projects to the display area and sets up at a table.  Then all day long people pass by and look at your work, some stop to talk with you about it.  My theme this year was Ottoman Turkish felt designs.  My documentation was entirely too long for this venue, so look for it in the about felt section of this blog if you would like to read it.  Also I plan on taking it to some Arts and Science competitions where the judges have to read it!  LOL.  Seriously, I’ve been fascinated lately by the idea that historically in urban areas there was probably a thriving feltmaking industry created by skilled felt artisan guilds. 

My next felting activity involved a camp mate of mine.  He showed up one day with a bag of New Zealand wool and wanted me to help him make some felt to put inside his period leather shoes.  I had to tell him that I didn’t know how well New Zealand wool would felt, so it would be an experiment for both of us.  The results are New Zealand wool is a slow felter.  But I think my friend has a nice soft sheet of wool to pad his shoes. 

Next I participated in something new at Pennsic, Artisan’s Row.  The concept was that there would be a theme for each day and artisans would demonstrate and teach their crafts in a casual hands-on way.  Previously the only avenue for that at Pennsic was to schedule a class.  Artisan’s Row turned out to be great for felting because, as I discovered a couple of years ago, teaching felting to a big group of people is really hard.  I believe that first people should watch an experienced felter at work, and then work with or side by side with the felter in order to get the best learning experience.  Besides being such a tactile craft that defies explanation, the process is also totally foreign to most people and people need to see both the process of felting and examples of good quality felt products just to get their bearings before even beginning a project. 

I had a wonderful experience that day.  I made this rug from natural colored Icelandic felting batts.  I’ve always enjoyed the fast felting nature of Icelandic wool, but combined with the heat and humidity of the day this was a super fast felting rug.   I chose to make a simple design by drafting roving to create the lines.  The motif is a classic Mongolian eternity knot.

To my surprise another very experienced felter showed up!  Even in the SCA felters are few and far between, especially those who have put any amount of time into it.  This woman had never been to an SCA event before and was only there to see her son be Knighted!  How fortuitous that we should meet!  She has even studied with Mehmet Girgiç & Theresa May-O’Brien, felt artists I have been hoping to study with for some time now.  So we generally geeked out over wool, soap and felt philosophy. I was really touched to spend time with such a kindred spirit.  She remarked how surprised she was to not see much felt at Pennsic given how common it would have been historically, esspecially for Near Eastern cultures.  We talked at length about this.  My main theory is that unlike other crafts, sewing,weaving, etc, felting almost died out, esspecially in the west.  People are just now finding out about it.  I hope to do my part to introduce felt to the SCA both by providing a quality product for purchase, but also by teaching people how to do it themselves.   Its not hard, just hard work!  

I also had a student.  She came wearing a bag of mine that had been given to her as a present and said she wanted to learn to make something like it.  She was surprised to learn I was the one who made her bag.    She watched for awhile, then tried some rolling.  She seemed inspired and I hope she goes on to make some felt of her own. 

So to top it all off we made it in the paper.  A reporter from the Pennsic Independant, Pennsic’s own daily newspaper, was there and interviewed us.  To my surprise she got all of our information right!  Here’s the article:

I have to give credit to my husband for the pattern for this hat.  He first made one for himelf, then I made this one.  It is made of two sided, red and black felt.  It is cut of 4 identical pieces then hand stitched together.  Felt embroiders like a dream. 

I’ve had this batt of angora/merino in my stash for a couple of years now.  I had dyed the wool when I bought it, (chemical dyes) and meant to use it long ago.  Finally I pulled it out and made this sweet baby rug.  It is sooooo soft.  I put a piece of cotton gauze in the middle to add strength and keep to keep the piece light weight.  The design is inspired by Ottoman Turkish art of the 16th century.

This cute little basket is actually the baby version of a bigger one that sold before I could take a picture of it.  Fortunately I sold it to a friend, so maybe I can get a good picture of her with her with her basket in her garb.  This basket is made of natural colored Icelandic wool, grown on a small farm less than 100 miles from me.

I was thinking awhile back about my style of bag making and where it comes from.  Most of the bags I make are the envelope style, and in essence they are felt emulating a fabric form.  When I’m making felt with historic re-creation in mind, most of these smaller accessory pieces are conjecture.  I may have an example of a bag in a painting, but it does not tell me what the bag is made of or how it was made.  Since felt is so moldable I find it interesting that I sometimes think of my work in terms of other mediums, felt in the form that fabric or pottery would normally take.  In this case, its felt in the shape of a basket.  What strikes me about this kind of 3D felt vessel is that it is much more true to the nature of felt and how it wants to behave.  To me this form feels less like felt trying to be something else, and more like felt being and doing what felt does best.

Again this is made of pre-felt.  With these flowers I found a pattern in a Dover book and copied it almost directly.  Like the Scythian saddle pad, I blew up the image to the right size and cut each shape out and used it for a template for each piece. 

Here’s how it looked in the middle of the felting process.

First lets note that it is almost impossible to take a picture of the full image on a ball.  Balls just look better in person.

This design is the heraldry of my local barony, Cynnabar.

Again I’m using the prefelt technique.   However there is a small bit of needle felting here.   The only time I use it is when making balls, and then it is only used to tack the design to the ball until it can be more properly wet felted.