Post by caterina on Dec 26, 2022 12:24:50 GMT
Hello!
I just wanted to show you my last foray into wetfelted wearables.
Last year I paid a subscription to one year of video classes by Lena Archbold ( www.lenaarchbold.co.uk/) : I managed to complete maybe 2-3 of her courses, then had no more time to do that, unfortunately, so I am bit behind with my learning.
I also find her voice better than a sleeping pill to my always tired brain!! It's only me, a lot of people really enjoy her style and heap praises on her courses! Must be some kind of unconscious thing that triggers my drowsiness when she talks, it really is terrible for me, I start yawning after a few minutes, and I honestly wanted to learn from her classes!
She has her own style, she taught me how to use the sander in rubbing and a lot of other interesting bits, and a lot of people like how she guides you step-by-step. I tend to skip some parts, then feel guilty and afraid to have missed something so go back to them and rerun them.
Anyway, I already tried a few things outside of my comfort zone, and I will finish my classes in time (I hope).
One of the courses was about gloves, mittens and arm-warmers, and I tried to felt the mittens, as I have shown you, with various results. My son is using his blue ones for school, actually, so I did not do too badly, although I wish I had time for more tries.
This time I wanted to try the arm-warmers, but no appetite for re-running the videos, so just went with my memory and what I learned with the mittens.
I made a resist from my hand&arm shape, just adding the shrinkage : that was not very well thought out, as I actually did not want my warmers to be tightly fitting, but a bit loose fitting, so I should have made the resist a bit larger (note to self).
Then,I put a fine first layer of sari silk, in a cloud lay-out, using my hand carders to get clouds of fiber easyly and quickly: that is one of the useful bits that I learned from Lena's videos.
The second and third fine layers are of merino tops: Lena recommends extra-fine merino for extra-softness of the warmers, but I did not have the extra-fine merino of the colour I wanted to use, so...
At this point, I started diverging from the instructions more and more... This happens to me quite a lot, especially when cooking from recipes: it's weird, but the end results often come out completely different from the photos of the original, I wonder why?
Anyway, I kind of remembered that the instructions were of two very fine layers of merino, with a diagonal lay-out, and then embellishment with silk handkerchiefs covering all on one side of the glove (the upper side)... Oh, well, I have found out that 2 very fine layers of merino meant I sometimes got uneven coverage, so I made my layers of normal merino a bit thicker. Also, I did not like too complicated colour patterns, so Lena's very full embellishment designs are useful for learning but not what I would wear.
I decided to decorate the external side of the warmers with undyed wool locks (I need to finish a bag of inferior quality locks!!), and that was it.
The warmers on the resist:
www.dropbox.com/s/y0fqirqns0jhf2r/IMG_20221223_181057.jpg?dl=0
I will freely admit that I am not very good at unusual lay-outs, yet, so that's maybe the reason I had got holes on my mittens in the past, quite apart from the thinner layer. Anyway, this time there are no thinner parts and I am happy with the eveness of the end result, and the softness of the warmers. They are not as soft as the mittens I made following (more or less) exactly Lena's instructions, they are a bit thicker.
Here are the finished reversible arm-warmers:
the wool upper side
www.dropbox.com/s/cj0m2inj1ky8o8l/IMG_20221225_115218.jpg?dl=0
the sari silk side
www.dropbox.com/s/xdi4fczurk4rs5e/IMG_20221225_115313.jpg?dl=0
How they fit me on both sides:
www.dropbox.com/s/hgg11bswguk6c6p/IMG_20221225_115001.jpg?dl=0
www.dropbox.com/s/qpqspnkrmotjzbe/IMG_20221225_114831.jpg?dl=0
As they are a bit too tightly-fitting for me, as I mentioned, my daughter claimed them, and now they are hers: she puts them on in the evening when reading in bed before sleeping, and they keep her hands and arms toasty and stylish! :-)
My husband saw them, and immediately asked for a pair, to use when playing saxophone at winter gigs outside: he says they would be a hit with musicians! I wonder if they should be a very serious black, or can be a bit fancier.
In the meantime, I was planning to make a pair for my mum and a pair for a friend of mine, both suffering from hand arthrosis, as I saw the stylish ones at CozyCozyWool on instagram and she says that they are wonderful for arthrosis sufferers. But I need their measures, and that could be tricky.
I just wanted to show you my last foray into wetfelted wearables.
Last year I paid a subscription to one year of video classes by Lena Archbold ( www.lenaarchbold.co.uk/) : I managed to complete maybe 2-3 of her courses, then had no more time to do that, unfortunately, so I am bit behind with my learning.
I also find her voice better than a sleeping pill to my always tired brain!! It's only me, a lot of people really enjoy her style and heap praises on her courses! Must be some kind of unconscious thing that triggers my drowsiness when she talks, it really is terrible for me, I start yawning after a few minutes, and I honestly wanted to learn from her classes!
She has her own style, she taught me how to use the sander in rubbing and a lot of other interesting bits, and a lot of people like how she guides you step-by-step. I tend to skip some parts, then feel guilty and afraid to have missed something so go back to them and rerun them.
Anyway, I already tried a few things outside of my comfort zone, and I will finish my classes in time (I hope).
One of the courses was about gloves, mittens and arm-warmers, and I tried to felt the mittens, as I have shown you, with various results. My son is using his blue ones for school, actually, so I did not do too badly, although I wish I had time for more tries.
This time I wanted to try the arm-warmers, but no appetite for re-running the videos, so just went with my memory and what I learned with the mittens.
I made a resist from my hand&arm shape, just adding the shrinkage : that was not very well thought out, as I actually did not want my warmers to be tightly fitting, but a bit loose fitting, so I should have made the resist a bit larger (note to self).
Then,I put a fine first layer of sari silk, in a cloud lay-out, using my hand carders to get clouds of fiber easyly and quickly: that is one of the useful bits that I learned from Lena's videos.
The second and third fine layers are of merino tops: Lena recommends extra-fine merino for extra-softness of the warmers, but I did not have the extra-fine merino of the colour I wanted to use, so...
At this point, I started diverging from the instructions more and more... This happens to me quite a lot, especially when cooking from recipes: it's weird, but the end results often come out completely different from the photos of the original, I wonder why?
Anyway, I kind of remembered that the instructions were of two very fine layers of merino, with a diagonal lay-out, and then embellishment with silk handkerchiefs covering all on one side of the glove (the upper side)... Oh, well, I have found out that 2 very fine layers of merino meant I sometimes got uneven coverage, so I made my layers of normal merino a bit thicker. Also, I did not like too complicated colour patterns, so Lena's very full embellishment designs are useful for learning but not what I would wear.
I decided to decorate the external side of the warmers with undyed wool locks (I need to finish a bag of inferior quality locks!!), and that was it.
The warmers on the resist:
www.dropbox.com/s/y0fqirqns0jhf2r/IMG_20221223_181057.jpg?dl=0
I will freely admit that I am not very good at unusual lay-outs, yet, so that's maybe the reason I had got holes on my mittens in the past, quite apart from the thinner layer. Anyway, this time there are no thinner parts and I am happy with the eveness of the end result, and the softness of the warmers. They are not as soft as the mittens I made following (more or less) exactly Lena's instructions, they are a bit thicker.
Here are the finished reversible arm-warmers:
the wool upper side
www.dropbox.com/s/cj0m2inj1ky8o8l/IMG_20221225_115218.jpg?dl=0
the sari silk side
www.dropbox.com/s/xdi4fczurk4rs5e/IMG_20221225_115313.jpg?dl=0
How they fit me on both sides:
www.dropbox.com/s/hgg11bswguk6c6p/IMG_20221225_115001.jpg?dl=0
www.dropbox.com/s/qpqspnkrmotjzbe/IMG_20221225_114831.jpg?dl=0
As they are a bit too tightly-fitting for me, as I mentioned, my daughter claimed them, and now they are hers: she puts them on in the evening when reading in bed before sleeping, and they keep her hands and arms toasty and stylish! :-)
My husband saw them, and immediately asked for a pair, to use when playing saxophone at winter gigs outside: he says they would be a hit with musicians! I wonder if they should be a very serious black, or can be a bit fancier.
In the meantime, I was planning to make a pair for my mum and a pair for a friend of mine, both suffering from hand arthrosis, as I saw the stylish ones at CozyCozyWool on instagram and she says that they are wonderful for arthrosis sufferers. But I need their measures, and that could be tricky.