Staying Home and my First Felt Pelt of 2020

Spring is coming, the crocuses are up and blooming.

The sheep have been shorn.

Roxie getting sheared.

 Thanks to some beautiful weather, the fleeces are all skirted and the first felt pelt of the year has been made.

It's 7 year old Roxie's fleece, she's half BFL and half Finn. I've never been able to do her fleece before because it's always been too dirty or too felted. This was the year and it's so soft and beautiful!

Sid and I have been staying home due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. My youngest son has been staying with us too. He does his work online now that the law school has gone to all online classes.

Shortcakes, sourdough English muffins, and ideas for supper tonight.

Sid has cooked up some fabulous meals and sourdough English muffins and bread, so he's keeping busy with that and with hatching quail. His restaurant customer is closed down now so we have LOTS of coturnix quail eggs on hand. Into the incubator 500 of them went. The babies (and hatching eggs) have been selling like crazy. We meet people on the porch to do the transactions. We've got turkey and duck eggs in the incubator now too. And we have a broody hen out in the barn.

I tried a new-to-me felting technique the other day. I'd had seen Ildi Kolozsi's beautiful pieces on Facebook. She shows photos of the layout of her design in line then how she fills in the elements with colored wool and then adds a backing. So I thought I'd give it try. I made the fatal mistake of using handspun yarn for my outline. It looked great, but it doesn't felt in as quickly as the roving, so next time I will use a thin strip of roving for my outlines.
Here are some photos of my experiment. Lots of changes will be made next time around!

My geometric border mysteriously turned into a goose head, so I went with it.

Filling in the goose with Finn top. Next time use pre-felt shapes?

Adding kettle-dyed batting for the back ground. Then added two layers of grey batting. Nest time 4 layers of backing. Then I wet it down and felted it.

It looked good at the pre-felt stage, but the yarn wasn't adhering. So off it came. Next time thin strips of roving for outlines.

Pre-felt without the yarn border. It looks like a pastel!

Fulled felt, the grey backing came through. Now it needs some detailing and highlights. Maybe I will add the border lines back in now that it's firm. Also, I cut the excess on the right side which caused it to have a thinner, more flared edge. The other side was tucked under. No cutting next time.

Update: I added the outlines back in with needlefelting.

Okay, now I'm off to make some face masks for the family. I have lots of flannel and pretty cotton quilt fabric. The thing that worries me now is Sid says he will have to shave his beard to get a snug fit with the face mask. I'm not sure I want to see him without a beard. I remember the week after Stan and I got married he had to shave off his mustache for meat cutting school down in Pipestone, MN. Holy moly, it was like I was married to a complete stranger! God only knows what Sid will look like without his facial hair. :-)