Felting and Fulling

For the Relief Society birthday celebration in Naknek, the sister in charge wanted to teach a class on wool felting. She's been doing it for several years and is very good. The class was a big hit! She's made hats, bedroom slippers, animals and other really nice things. There are various techniques, but we just made a simple piece by pulling the wool and sticking it about a million times with this large, very sharp needle. Several people bled. But not me. I only bleed for quilting. I'm a discriminate bleeder. Anyway, you take a big wad a sheep wool and roll it around in your hands and then start sticking at it to condense the fibers. It's actually quite cool. There are also wet processes you can use to layer the wool with other fabrics to make nice wearable things as well. So here is the mouse we all made. The arms and legs are little pipe cleaner things that you roll wool around and then use the needle to "stick" it to the main piece. This took me about two hours. When I first saw it, I thought it was stuffed, but it's not, it's just a hunk of wool formed by sticking it with that needle.

But here is what I am really interested in! The gift shop at the airport had a large basket of these beautiful little purses, all colors, and with the cutes embellishments. This is called "fulling" where you knit or crochet the piece and then do something to it in hot water and shrink it up. This I want to find out about. I really love it! So, I will check the ravelry website and see if there's anything on there, or just google it. I know I probably bought the ugliest one, but I loved the little beads and needed a sample. It is held closed with a large snap. It would hold change, but also money, credit cards, ID, keys, lip gloss, whatever you needed to make a day of it!