Fall and Winter Shedule 2024-2025

 

Things are shaping up to be a busy fall show and class schedule!

First up is Unplugged at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN September 19-21. I will have a table in the instructor's sales area of the newly built building. Fall is a beautiful time to visit the north shore!

Next up is the Prairie Star Farm Care event on September 26th, in Princeton, MN. I will be selling skinnfell items, felted items, goat milk soaps and family recipe spices. Tickets are available.

The following weekend, Oct. 5th,  I'll be at Osprey Wilds Womens Wellness weekend in Sandstone, MN. I'm teaching a botanical printed silk scarf and small felted "stones". The event is full but they will host another one next spring.

Then on October 19th I'll be teaching a Tibetan Lambskin Boa class at the Minnesota Fiber Festival in Cambridge, MN.

October 26th is my Intro to Skinnfell class at Marine Mills Folk School in Marine on St. Croix, MN. Still room to sign up!

Nov. 1st I head to the Pacific Northwest Arts School on Whidbey Island to take a felted bag class with Flora Carlisle Kovacs. How exciting is that!

Nov. 16th I'll be back at Marine Mills Folk School to teach my Skinnfell hat class.

Then the biggest event on my calendar is the American Swedish Institute's Julmarknad, Dec. 6-7 in Minneapolis, MN. I will share a booth with Kilns of Flanders again this year. I'll have my flock's felted fleeces for sale along with lots of Skinnfell items, goatmilk soaps, family recipe spices and botanical printed scarves. 

In the new year, Sue and I will teach my Skinnfell hat class at ASI on January 19th, 2025. Final details and registration be announced.

And I will be offering guidance and the use of my blocks during North House Folk School's Fiber week in a Skinnfell: Norwegian Block Printing Party. Participants in this two day class will bring their own skins (or purchase from me) and work on their own projects while having access to my Norwegian wood blocks, paints, and original project patterns.

Whew! I can't believe I scheduled all that. It really adds up!

Spring and Summer Classes 2024

Upcoming SUMMER CLASSES!

 

Introduction to Skinnfell class at Marine Mills Folk School on Saturday, July 22nd. Here's a link to sign up. I've got some colored and some white sheepskins set aside for the class, but if you have a sheepskin you want to print, you're welcome to bring it to class. And I have a new shipment of blocks coming from Norway! I hope to have them in time for the class.

 

In-depth Raw Felted Fleece class at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN. It is scheduled for August 23-25th.  We start on Friday afternoon delving into fleeces and choosing the best ones for our projects. The second day is the work day where we felt and full the fleeces into rugs or coverlets (depends of choice and type of fleece) and the morning of the third day we add the finishing touches to our work. Some ambitious students dive right in to do another one! I'll be bringing several big fluffy fleeces that can be used in class. You can register here: https://northhouse.org/course-session/raw-felted-fleece-a-new-approach-to-the-sheepskin-blanket-8-23-2024

 

Skinnfell Hat at Marine Mills Folk School in Marine on St. Croix on Saturday, November 16th. Will post a sign up link when one becomes available

Past Classes: 

Introduction to Skinnfell  at the American Swedish Institute on February 18th. Fun class!

I taught two classes at Shepherd's Harvest this year. Introduction to Skinnfell, on Saturday, May 11 and a Skinnfell Hat class on Sunday, May 12. The weather was perfect this year!

 

I taught a Small Felted Fleece class on Saturday June 22nd, at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, MN. We used fleeces from my friends Michelle and Tim Guderian at Legacy Farms in Mora, MN, so nice and fluffy!

I also taught three felted fleece sessions in my outdoor studio. The was in May and then two more in June. So much fun when the weather is good and the mosquitoes are held at bay! We are in Minnesota after all.

 

 

 

Getting ready for Christmas Markets!

 

I'll be doing two Christmas markets this year. The first one is at Sapsucker Farms in Brook Park, MN Nov. 18-19th. And the second one is the American Swedish Institute's Julmarknad Dec. 1-3, 2023 in Minneapolis. 

I'm saving ten felt pelts I made from my flock to debut at Julmarknad. They all turned out so well! I've needlefelted the sheep's name and the year of shearing on the back of the pelt. I no longer breed my sheep and the ones who are here are it. So I've decided to commemorate their fleeces in a 2023 collection. Stop in to see them! There are fleeces from Juno, Dolly, Yolanda, Maggie, Maisie, Ingrid, Grettel, Smudge, Blue, and Lester. I did Roxie's fleece too, but I'm going to keep hers. She's getting pretty old for her breed and I must have one to remember her by.

I'll have Skinnfell items (ornaments, muffs, couch throws and chair pads), my full line of handcrafted goat milk soaps, ecoprinted scarves and Tibetan lamb boas. And as always, Sid's family recipe spices Toadspit and Lizard Dust.

Another way to Felt locks

I belong to a group on Facebook called Vegetarian Sheepskin, which is a strange name for felt pelts, but there are lots of variations on what to call these felt-backed fleeces. Recently there have been a few posts about a way to felt the locks using some type of grid. I thought I would give it a try. So I ordered some plastic poultry fencing with 3/5" openings. It's stiff plastic. I would try a more flexible plastic next time. Some of the posters say they have left the grid in the finished piece for reasons that will become clear later in this post.

This photo shows a small sample of washed TeeswaterX locks that have been threaded through the grid openings. It's a tedious job threading the locks. I like to have 3/4" of the cut end coming through the grid. Of course as you get farther along, the locks catch on each other and it gets tedious trying to keep the cut ends at an even length across. 

To safeguard these long locks from felting together, I placed a piece of bubble wrap under the grid and over the locks that were hanging out to one side.

The next step is to cover the cut ends with roving.

Then I covered with netting and applied water. This is the wetted down sample.

 

To begin the felting process, I gently rubbed with a flat palm in a circular motion for a few minutes with the wool protected by netting.

 

 

After a skin had developed with the gentle rubbing, I removed the netting and applied a piece of solar pool cover (any bubble wrap will do, but solar pool cover is more rigid so it works faster).  Again I rubbed in a circular motion with flat palms, but with much more force than before.  I did this for a few minutes, maybe five. It didn't take long to felt those cut ends into the roving. 

Then came the tricky part, removing the locks from the grid. I found that removing the grid was easiest to do with washed locks or short locks. I also did this experiment with long raw Lincoln locks and actually had to CUT the plastic apart to free up the wool! I got so caught up in it I neglected to take photos. Sorry! Anyway, suffice it to say, carefully and gently work the plastic grid down the length of the locks to remove it without pulling the locks away from the felted backing. 

Then dip the piece in warm soapy water and work the felt by squeezing and rubbing until it's firm. Then dip and lift the piece in and out of the water until the locks are clean.  Rinse, roll in a towel and set aside to dry.

The photo below shows my attempts at this. Left to right: raw short-stapled Gotland locks; and that same Gotland but threaded through the grid AND a pre-felt backing to limit the movement of the locks from the grid; long raw Linclon locks; and the washed Teeswater locks shown in the process photos above.

In my opinion, this method is not worth the extra effort. I just did small samples, there's no way I would want to do a chair pad with this method. One could easily just felt the locks without the grid and if that's too hard, needle felting them to a pre-felt backing and then wet felting is more efficient in my opinion.

I have seen another version of creating larger pieces where wooden slats were placed in a vice and locks laid across the slat with the cut end protruding, then another slat and more locks, repeating to the desired size and tightening the vice to hold everything in place while the back was felted. Then the slats were removed and the resulted was a thin, flexible fabric with gorgeous locks. I might try that method some day. But by using my method of nuno-felting gauze onto the back of a raw fleece, I can get a very soft flexible fleece too.

Happy felting everyone! My shearer is coming in two days and I'll have 17 more fleeces!

Felted Faux Sheepskin Tutorial - No longer Available

 

This is for experienced wet felters. Step-by-step instructions on how to turn a raw fleece into a felted rug or luxurious lap blanket in an afternoon. Eleven pages with process photos. Access to my private Facebook group to ask questions and share project photos. I have taught my method of creating felted fleeces to hundreds of students over the past several years. There are many ways to create felted fleeces (a.k.a. humane sheepskins, eco-rugs, vegetarian sheepskins, faux sheepskins). This method is fast and efficient. It doesn't require a lot of equipment, just a  4'x8' solar pool cover, pool noodle, mosquito netting, and a laundry tub to rinse and full the fleece. You must have previous experience with wet felting (know how to layout fiber, how to felt, and how to full) and have the physical ability to maneuver a heavy, wet fleece.

 The tutorial is longer available, but if you're interested in taking a class in my Ogilvie, MN studio, shoot me an email for details.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

 

Norwegian Skinnfell Traps

 

I got to use my new wood blocks from fjellform  Norway this week. They are such beautiful blocks!

I made this  chair cover (trap) using six of the eight blocks I bought. 

The printing is the fun part, the measuring, cutting and stitching is the work part. But the result is so worth the effort!

I'm making some large traps and some small chair pad sets this week. I will put some in my Square shop soon.