Monday night Jenny, Alice and I joined three other felters at Space to Create in Ballard for two hours of wooly mayhem. StC's neighborhood features some cool looking shops & cafes on 70th a block east of 15th. One shop just sells umbrellas!
Folded bath towels topped with squares of bubble wrap indicated our individual work spaces on a long table. Several tubs of murky olive green mystery fluid were on the table top. We three Seamsters (a song title, perhaps?) were the only greenhorns there, since the other women had previously taken other felting workshops with our instructor, Leah. After Leah talked a bit about the process of felting and the materials we'd be using we began.
The first project was felting soap, which is a pretty cool item, since you exfoliate as you clean! After wrapping our soap with wool roving we dipped our hands in the mystery fluid (actually, melted soap & water which had an eerie, slithery feel) & began the felting process by very gently rotating the soap as if we were handling a baby bird. Eventually you increase pressure as the felting has begun. After we each finished three bars we moved on to felting rocks, then to making a felt box. These two projects called for a different type of roving, and it took much longer. Felting soap is quicker since the felting process is being happening from inside and outside simultaneously. We used our bubble wrap as washboards for added friction on the rocks & boxes. Here are pictures of our work! Jenny's begun using one of her soaps already so it's not in the soap shot.
Leah said we should all go out and spread the gospel -- maybe teach friends to felt, too. If we have the interest we can do a little workshop.
