For the Holidays: Felted Leaves Garland

This simple pattern , courtesy of Red Heart, is easy to adapt to just about any time of year by altering colors. The one shown here is perfect for Christmas, whether coiled up as a candle ring, garlanding the tree, or bedecking  the mantle or banister. You could even use a template for holly, flowers, [...]

Christmas Knits: Felted Stocking

This design has so many embellishment possibilities. Use your imagination to turn out one of a kind holiday keepsakes.

pattern link

My Favorite Felted Mittens Pattern

This past winter, I knitted, felted and sold about 20 pairs of felted mittens at pre-holiday craft fairs. I don’t mind making socks on circular needles, but not mittens – guess the hole for the thumb bothers me, I dunno. Anyway, I use the 2-needle pattern below, but I make the mittens much [...]

Textile Terms: Wool Gathering

When someone is daydreaming instead of paying attention to the talk at hand, it used to be, and sometimes still is said that the person is “wool gathering” .  How did that saying come about? Most people don’t require any wool at all to do their fanciful thinking.
The answer is simple enough. When sheep are [...]

Natural Dyeing: Bracken Fern

The very first natural dye I ever used (perhaps 20 years ago) is bracken fern. It was April in CT, and I had to do a demo at a Rev War re-enactment. Not many plants available here that early in the spring. But the  “fiddleheads” from the wild ferns that grow around the yard were [...]

Save Your Leftover Easter Egg Dye!

This year, my niece and nephew are doing the egg dyeing. But I did it last year, and used the leftover PAAS egg dyes  on some white wool roving I had in my stash. Here’s the result, which I’m quite pleased with. After it’s spun and plied, I’ll post a yarn photo:

Knitting News: Yarn and Fiber CSA

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and idea in which the individual can invest $$ in a farm and share in the yield. It’s been done for quite a while now for food, and now a fiber/yarn producer has started a CSA for knitters and other fiber artists. Martha’s Vinyard Fiber Farm and Hudson Valley [...]

Natural Dyeing: Color Variations with Wool

I’ve been dyeing wool fleeces and handspun yarns with natural sources for nearly 20 years. One thing that perplexed me was the way the yarn would often appear somewhat variegated, with lighter and darker segments. A few years ago, it finally dawned on me what the cause was. It’s urine staining. Urine was often used [...]

Roving, Rolags, and Batts

On  some of the fiber arts forums I haunt, some of the members have asked what “roving” is. Well, as Wikipedia explains, a roving is a long and narrow bundle of fiber with a twist to hold the fiber together.  It is created by carding or combing the fiber, and  then drawing it into long [...]

Wool Dyeing: Copper Penny Blue

This dye substance is not a plant, but it would have been available in one form or other to many colonial home dyers. Known as “Copper Penny Blue”, this is a dye that does not need a separate mordant or even heat. The recipe is simple but it does take from 2-4 weeks for the [...]