Weaving Trials

As I wrote in my last but one post, I’ve been doing a lot of things recently. For today, I’m going to tell you about my weaving test.

I’ve tried weaving before on a normal straight loom but this year I found out about weaving in the round with either a square or, yes, a round loom. I just had to give it a go and see how it worked.

Before I show you though, please bear in mind that this is my first attempt and only a practice run to try it out. I only used yarn that I had in my stash and I didn’t attempt to produce any type of pattern on my first go. My aim was just to get the hang of it before trying anything more complicated and to see how it looked when I took it off the loom.

This is how it turned out, just as I was about to take it off the loom:

And here it is all cut off and tied up:

I’m not quite happy with it because it turned up at the edge like a bowl and I’m not quite sure why. If I were to tie it to a ring to hang it up, I think it would be all right, but if I was going to do anything else with it, I’d have to work out how to get it flat. Maybe I pulled the yarn too tightly.

But these things are all part of learning and I’m sharing it with you because it shows not everything turns out correctly first time round. Art and craft are all about learning how things work, what doesn’t and how best to deal with whatever materials you’re using. Sometimes I wonder if people think these things pop out fully formed and don’t realise the work behind it, the trials and the failures, the tests and the try, try, try again. I know I’ve been through lots of this kind of thing and I sometimes forget when I see other people’s work that they’ve probably gone through a similar trial and error period too.

When I’ve done some more trials with this and worked out what I’m going to do with the finished thing, I’ll let you know.

Have you ever tried anything that didn’t work first time, that you’ve had to have several attempts at to get it right? Let me know.

Fabulous Felt

I first tried felting a long time ago, back in college. I left it alone for quite a while because I could never get the result I wanted, but having recently tried needle felting, it got me wanting to try wet felting again.

I got some wool from Crafty Cat Knitty Bits and started to felt, only then remembering the effort involved in rubbing the fibres together. Anyway, I carried on, nearly getting repetitive strain injury, and here is the result. I think I should have started with something smaller, but it kind of worked as a first attempt after so long. 

 I tried to get a kind of vessel shape and tried to keep all the beautiful colours visible in their own right rather than mixing them up.

 I added the swirls when it was dry using needle felting. It was easier than trying to achieve them with the wet method and I’m fairly happy with it, but I need to refine some parts when I do another vessel and I may go smaller. All part of the learning process! 

I quite enjoyed making it. I think there’s something about making something with your hands, especially being so ‘hands-on’ with felting. It seems like a natural thing to be doing and is very satisfying, especially when you get a product at the end of the process.