Sterling silver, wool
L 6.7 cm x W 0.5 cm
Formed, wet-felted

Fun with Fibre Pendant 1 (2009)

Sterling silver, wool
L 6.5 cm x W 0.4 cm
Formed, wet-felted

Fun with Fibre Pendant 2 (2009)

Sterling silver, fine silver, cotton thread
L 4.5 cm x W 0.45 cm
Nalbinding (viking knitting), embroidered

This has been a frustrating week, in terms of getting anything done.  Number 2 Son has been demanding a lot of attention.  “I want to do homework!  I want another printing sheet!” every 10 freaking minutes.  Normally, a parent loves to hear that their child wants to do homework, but in my case, it meant getting up from bench, sitting down at the computer, waiting for him to make up his mind about what he wanted to work on – an achingly slow process – and then printing it off.  As a result, I was never able to focus on finishing the project whose deadline came and went on Friday.

He starts JK in the fall, and then I will have more extended blocks of time to work without interruption.  I’m trying to enjoy these last couple of months of us being together before he becomes a Big School Boy, but geez it’s annoying to miss a deadline.

I haven’t given up on trying to finish the project, which is very labour intensive, but by last night, I decided that I needed to change gears.  “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” was on tv, so I set up my felting stuff on the floor, and played while watching the movie.  I’m still working on learning felting, still hoping to apply it to bonsai.  One of the websites I stumbled across applied roving to craft wire, so I thought I’d give that a go.

My results are nothing spectacular, but then they weren’t intended to be.

The other thing I wanted to try was mixing fibre and nalbinding.  I actually wanted to mix nalbinding with wire embroidery, but figured it would be too high on the PITA factor.  I ended up using embroidery thread, but the idea still has a high PITA factor.  My embroidering skills leave much to be desired as well *grin*.   I may try the idea again, but approach it differently.

More photos:

This is not the project I wanted to post this week, but the one I’ve been playing with most of this evening is being very stubborn.  I’m still struggling with finishing it.

I bought a bunch of wool roving yesterday, and spent part of this afternoon experimenting with wet felting.

I found a really good series of videos on wet felted bangles on eHow.com, so the technique was easy to replicate.  Unfortunately, there’s no indication of who the lady is in the videos – I’d love to give her the credit she’s due.

I made a bunch of different things, which I’ll be playing with over the coming days.  This was my first attempt at a felt bangle.  It’s monstrous, but a reasonable start.

I’ve been debating with myself for three weeks about what and how much to write about this week’s entry.  I made the felted heart in week 2, but then discovered that studio gremlins had made off with my copper wire…  I finally found a small spool of it last week, so was able to start work on the project.  The gremlins are refusing to let go of the rest, though, so this is the last copper piece I’m going to be making for the time being.

I spent a lot of time during my hiatus meditating on the direction I should go with my jewellery.  Time and time again I’ve gotten the message that my jewellery needs to connect with the spirit, and express more of my inner voice.

So, my piece this week speaks from a very personal perspective.  The very long story behind it is one that only my very closest friends have known about before now.

Back in 2006, when I was working with the Bonsai Rings one of the challenges I faced was to create realistic looking foliage.  A technique I thought might work well was felting.  I signed up for a felting course, but unfortunately various circumstances prevented me from taking it.

So recently, when I was putting together a Treasury on Etsy.com, I came across a shop that sold needle felting kits.  The price was good, so I took the plunge and bought one.

I decided to experiment first with the least appealing colour for foliage:  pink.

The technique is quite simple and fun.  On the first night, I made two little balls.  The next night I had a meeting with Maegen Black, a colleague who works with me on MAGazine.  She was wearing three felted bangles made by a BC artist whose name I didn’t catch.  (Edit: Maegen let me know the artist’s name is Deb Dumka). Intrigued, I tried a version of my own the next night.

Since I’m now working on my YOJ projects, I decided to use this little circle for my week 1 submission.  To jazz it up, I broke out the torch and made a bunch of sterling silver studs to decorate the circle.  Remembering the mess I got myself into during the previous YOJ, I did all of the finishing prior to assembling the pendant.